2024 : 12 : 7
Mahdi Khodaei Motlagh

Mahdi Khodaei Motlagh

Academic rank: Professor
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1281-7152
Education: PhD.
ScopusId: 41861677000
HIndex:
Faculty: Agriculture and Environment
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Phone:

Research

Title
Efficacy of a phytonutrient supplement at different dietary protein contents on growth performance, gut morphology, digestive enzymes activities and stress indicators of broilers subjected to circular heat stress
Type
JournalPaper
Keywords
essential oils, crude protein, gut health, heat-stressed broilers.
Year
2021
Journal Animal Production Science
DOI
Researchers Rohalah Ghasemi ، Hosseinali Ghasemi ، Iman Hajkhodadadi ، Mahdi Khodaei Motlagh

Abstract

Context: Dietary manipulations such as reductions in protein or the addition of bioactive feed additives might alleviate the adverse effects of high ambient temperature in poultry. Aims: The effects of dietary crude protein (CP) and phytonutrient mixture (PM) on growth performance and physiological responses were evaluated in broilers under circular heat stress (HS). Methods: In total, 420 1-day-old broiler chickens were randomly distributed to seven treatments in a factorial arrangement (3 × 2), with three levels of CP (normal, medium (95% of the normal CP content) and low (90% of the normal CP content)) and with or without the addition of PM (mixture of 5 mg/kg carvacrol, 3 mg/kg cinnamaldehyde, and 2 mg/kg capsicum oleoresin). The thermoneutral control (TNC) birds were housed in a thermoneutral chamber and fed with a normal-CP diet without PM supplementation. The other six groups were kept in a HS chamber (33°C) for 8 h (1000 hours to 1800 hours). Key results: After 6 weeks, feeding broiler chickens with low-CP diets had adversely affected growth performance and intestinal protease activities, while mortality rate, heterophile to lymphocyte ratio, and serum cortisol concentration of the low-CP group were lower (P < 0.05) than those of the high-CP group. Dietary PM supplementation also positively influenced (P < 0.05) average daily gain, feed conversion ratio, intestinal lipase and trypsin activities and serum T4 concentration. There were the CP × PM interactions (P < 0.05) for jejunal villus height and villus surface area, indicating that the effect of PM on these responses was more marked at the lower dietary CP contents. Conclusions: Supplementation with PM can ameliorate the detrimental effects of HS on productive performance and digestive enzyme activities in broilers. The PM supplementation could improve intestinal morphology when applied to the diets of heat-stressed broilers with lower CP contents (95% and 90% of the recommendations). Implications: Althoug