Effect of garlic powder supplementation on gut bacterial load, histopathology and immunity of colour synthetic broilers

Abstract

To study the effect of garlic supplementation on gut bacterial load, histopathology and immunity of coloursynthetic broilers, 100 day old colour synthetic broiler chicks were randomly distributed into five dietary treatments.The dietary treatments for this experiment were: T1: Basal diet, T2: Basal diet + Probiotic, T3: Basal diet + Garlicpowder (0.5% of Basal diet), T4: Basal diet + Garlic powder (0.75% of Basal diet) and T5: Basal diet + Garlicpowder (1% of Basal diet). Cellular immunity, weight of lymphoid organs and histopathology were performed at35th day of experimental feeding period. The faecal bacterial load was performed at 14th and 28th day of experimentand intestinal bacterial load at 35th day. The weight of lymphoid organs, CBH response of different treated groupsdid not differ significantly. The total plate count (log10 cfu/ml) in the faeces of birds at 14th day of experiment ofgroup T1 was found to be significantly higher than that of garlic and probiotic fed groups. The total plate count andE. coli count in faeces at 28th day and intestine (35th day) of birds in garlic supplemented groups were found to besignificantly lower than the control group. The total plate count and E. coli count in the faces (28th day) andintestine (35th day) of the birds of 0.75 and 1.0% levels of garlic feeding had no significant difference between thetreated groups. From this experiment, it may be concluded that supplementation of garlic at 0.75% in coloursynthetic broiler ration reduced the gut microbial load.

Keywords

• Bacterial load
• Broilers
• Faecal microbial load
• Garlic
• Histopathology
• Immunity