Vitamin C in broiler diets

摘要

Three series of trials were conducted using 1 week old broiler chicks to evaluate the effect of dietary vitamin C supplementation on the performance of broiler chickens during the hot dry (HD, May-June 1992), hot wet (HW, August-September 1992) and cold dry (CD, December 1992-January 1993) months of the year, In all trials, 0,200 or 400 mg vitamin C per kg feed was added to corn-soy based diets. Results of the three trials showed no significant (P>0.5) season x vitamin C level interaction on body weight, feed efficiency, dressing percentage and relative weights of gizzard, liver, heart and spleen of broilers. Likewise, different levels of vitamins C in the diet showed no significant (P>0.05) effect on all parameters measured. Moreover, there was nosignificant (P>0.05) season effect on body weight, feed consumption and dressing percentage. The differences in feed efficiency with season, although not significant, may have been due to the poor quality of corn used in the last two weeks of feeding ofthe birds raised in the HD season. Serum vitamin C level showed significant (P>0.5) season x vitamin C level interaction at seven weeks of age. A significant (P>0.05) linear trend in serum vitamin C was observed in birds raised during the HD season whilea (P>0,05) quadratic trend was observed in serum vitamin C level in birds raised during the HW season. The results of this study showed that for balanced com-soy based diet, there is no further need for vitamin C supplementation during the HD, HW and CD seasons for broilers.