Effect of dietary addition of herbal and microbial supplements on growth performance, nutrient retention and immunity of commercial broiler chicken

Gurram, S., Bora, S., Thota, S., Reddy, S., Supriya, R., Sushmasri, K., Mendu, M. and Gupta, S. 2024. Effect of dietary addition of herbal and microbial supplements on growth performance, nutrient retention and immunity of commercial broiler chicken. Indian Journal of Poultry Science, 59(3): 347–353. This study evaluated the effect of dietary supplementation of herbal and microbial supplements on growth, immunity and nutrient retention in broiler chicken. The experiment was conducted using 420 day-old commercial broiler chicks, which were randomly divided into 7 dietary treatments, with 12 replicates having 5 chicks in each. Dietary treatments include T1: Basal diet (BD) alone, T2: BD + Nbiotic at 250 g/tonne of feed; T3: BD + Liqbiotic (in drinking water; per day/100 birds) 0–2 weeks: 2.5 mL; 2–4 weeks: 5.0 mL; 4–6 weeks: 10.0 mL; T4: BD + Salcochek Pro at 500 g/tonne of feed, T5: BD + AV/EGM/19 at 250 g/tonne of feed, T6: BD + AV/EGM/ 20 at 250 g/tonne of feed, T7: BD + Clostat (Bacillus subtilis) at 100 g/tonne of feed. The results revealed that significantly (p=0.05) higher body weight gain (BWG) and better feed conversion ratio (FCR) were observed in Nbiotic (T2), Liqbiotic (T3), AV/EGF/20 (T6) and Clostat (T7) groups during finisher phase when compared to control (T1) and other treatment groups. Dietary treatments did not show any significant effect on feed intake during pre-starter and starter phases, however significantly higher feed intake was observed in Nbiotic (T2) group. The humoral immune response was significantly (p=0.05) higher in Nbiotic (T2), Liqbiotic (T3) and Salcochek Pro (T4) groups when compared to control (T1) and other treatment groups. Dietary inclusion of herbal and microbial supplements, significantly (p=0.05) improved the crude protein (CP) digestibility, whereas energy and dry matter digestibilities were not affected. Finally, it could be concluded that supplementation of Nbiotic (T2), Liqbiotic (T3), AV/EGF/20 (T6) and Clostat (T7) can be recommended to improve the finisher phase BWG and FCR of broiler chicken. The CP digestibility was improved in all the dietary supplemented groups when compared to control group, whereas improved immunity was noticed in Nbiotic (T2), Liqbiotic (T3) and Salcochek pro (T4) supplemented groups.