EFFECTS OF ASCORBIC ACID ON WEIGHT GAIN AND HAEMATOLOGICAL PROFILE OF BROILER CHICKENS

A. S. Muhammad, M. Abubakar, S. Adamu, N. S. Shehu, G. Adamu

Abstract


The experiment was conducted to determine the effects of feeding graded levels of ascorbic acid on growth performance and hematological parameters of broiler chickens. Five diets were formulated with ascorbic acid at 0.00, 0.07, 0.15, 0.22, and 0.30g/kg for diets 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 respectively. Two hundred and twenty five (225) day old broiler chicks were randomly allocated to five dietary treatments with 45 birds per diet and 15 birds per replicate in a completely randomized design. The experiment lasted for a period of 8 weeks. (During the starterphase, result revealed that daily feed intake (47.74 to 55.22g), daily weight gain (11.23 to 14.30g), feed conversion ratio (3.54 to 4.42) and feed efficiently (0.23 to 0.28) were not affected by the dietary levels of ascorbic acid inclusion. The overall performance showed that daily feed intake (75.15 to 80.10g), daily weight gain (13.56 to 17.24g), feed conversion ratio (4.40 to 5.45) and feed efficiency (0.21 to 0.24) were not significantly affected by the inclusion of ascorbic acid in the diets. The result of hematological study shown that (7.75µL),, red blood cell (3.80 to 4.87µL) and total protein 93.42 to 3.68g/L) were not significantly affected by the dietary treatments). It may be concluded that including ascorbic acid at up to 0.30% in the diets of broiler chickens did not affect feed intake, growth performance and hematological parameters.


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