Evaluation of the effect of feeding commercial synbiotic and diet-acidifiers on histological and gut morphometric of Arbor-Acre broiler chickens

摘要

The desire to shift attention from synthetic drugs/growth promoter utilization in livestock feed calls for the exploration of alternative feed additives having less harmful effects on the health of food animals and human consumers. To study the effects of some of these other potential feed additives on broiler production, one hundred and forty four day old broiler chickens were sourced and divided into four groups in a Completely Randomised Design (CRD) experiment and reared for 8 weeks. Four diets were prepared to constitute four experimental groups. Group I was the control with the absence of synbiotic or acidifier. Synbiotic was included in Group II diet while Group III had buffered feed acidifier. Group IV diet was the only one in which Synbiotic and acidifiers were pulled together. Duodenal sections for gut morphometry were taken at the starter and finisher phases of the rearing period while that of histology were done at termination of the experiment. Microscopic examination of the sections revealed no observable lesions in all the duodenal villi from the various groups. However, the villi width as observed in Group IV (at the starter phase) had the longest measurement of 53.33±6.67μm while Group II had the deepest cryptal measurement of 66.67±12.02 μm. At the finisher phase, there was significant difference in the villi width. Group II had a relatively higher villi length (261.67±30.60μm) and deeper cryptal depth (66.67±8.82 μm) when compared with other experimental groups. The length and width of a villus are known to have a direct bearing on the digestion and absorption of nutrients by an animal. From these results, diet-acidifier and synbiotic had no deleterious effects on gut morphology of the experimental broiler chickens and as such could be used to replace antibiotics and anabolic steroids as growth promoters in the rearing of broiler chickens.