Thymol feed supplementation and growth performance in a commercial broiler flock

LUNA, A.; TARIFA, M. F. ; ZYGADLO, J. A.; MARIN, R. H.

orlando, Florida

Congreso; 2017 PSA Anual Meeting; 2017

Poultry Science Association

Consumer concern on the quality of meat and meat products has greatly increased during the past decades. Furthermore, dietary synthetic antibiotics products used as growth promoters have been restricted or even banned in many countries. In this regard, edible plants, herbs spices, essential oils or their main components has been suggested as non-traditional natural feed supplements in broiler diets to improve growth performance, products quality and even their welfare. Thymol (THY), a main component of oregano essential oil with generally recognized as safe status (Food and Drug Administration, USA), has been proved as an effective antimicrobial and antioxidant compound with similar action than buthylated hidroxytoluene (BHT), a synthetic antioxidant widely used in poultry industry. On the other hand, tocopherol (TOC) have also proved antioxidant activity with potential as a growth promoter. Recently, synergic antioxidant activity was reported between TOC and ascorbyl palmitate (AP). Herein, we evaluated whether broiler diet supplementation with THY and a formulation mix with TOC and AP (1:0.5:0.5, respectively) under commercial conditions have potential as growth promoter. One day male broiler chicks with similar BW (980) were randomly assigned to 1 of 7 dietary groups (4 replicates of 35 birds each) as follows: Basal (no feed supplements); Promotor (20mg bambermycin/kg feed); BHT (1.33 mmol of BHT/kg feed); Promotor + BHT (20mg bambermycin + 1.33 mmol of BHT/kg feed); TOC-AP (0.67 mmoles of TOC + 0.67 mmoles of AP/kg feed); THY (1.33 mmoles of THY/kg feed); and THY+TOC-AP (0.67 mmoles of THY + 0.67 mmoles of a mix 1:1 of TOC + AP). Along 7 wk, BW, feed intake and feed conversion ratio were weekly evaluated. Repeated measure ANOVAs and Fisher tests were used to detect differences at P