Impact of Dietary Supplementation of Whole Flaxseed and Flaxseed Meal to Infected Broiler Chickens with Eimeria tenella

摘要

Background and Objective: Coccidiosis is the major parasitic disease affecting poultry industry. Drugs and live vaccines are the two main control measures for the disease. However, due to the prolonged drug usage and the high cost of vaccines, alternative strategies are needed for more effective and safer control of coccidiosis in chickens. This experiment was conducted to determine the effects of supplementation broiler diets with source of n-3 fatty acid s as 10% grinding whole flaxseed (WF) or flaxseed meal (FM) during coccidian infection. Materials and Methods: A total of 121 days old Cobb chicks were randomly allocated to 4 treatments, 3 replicates containing 10 chicks in each replicate. The chickens in groups 1 and 2 were fed corn-soybean based diet (negative and positive control), chickens in group 3 were fed control diet supplemented with 10% WF and chickens in group 4 were fed 10% FM. Diets were fed from 8 days of age throughout 33 days of age. Chickens were inoculated by gavage with 40,000 sporulated oocysts of Eimeria tenella ( E. tenella ) at 21th day of age. Growth performance, oocysts count, cytokines and cecal histopathological changes were determined at the days 28 and 33 of age. Results: Feeding broilers in group 4 with 10% FM produced higher body weight (BW), body weight gain (BWG), plasma levels of interleukin (IL)-6 and tumor necrosis factor (TNF-α) with lower sporulated oocysts count (pConclusion: Dietary supplementation of infected broilers with 10% FM improved growth performance, reduced oocyst excretion during oocysts shedding period and diminished the severity of E. tenella infection.