Abstract:
The present investigation was conducted to determine the impact of the dietary addition of garlic and ginger as natural feed additives on feed intake, productive performance, carcass characteristics, hematology and serum biochemistry, economic efficiency, and mortality of broilers. A total of one hundred and ninety-two day old, unsexed (cobb-500) broiler were randomly divided into four experimental groups with three replication per treatment which consisted 16 birds. The birds were fed on two control diets (starter and finisher diets). The garlic (Allium sativum) and ginger (Zingiber officinale) were added in levels to the experimental diets in the four experimental groups. The first group (T1) fed on diets without feed additives (control diet). The other groups (T2), (T3) and (T4) were fed on basal diets supplemented with levels of 0.5% garlic, 0.5% ginger and 0.5% and 0.5% ginger mixture, respectively. The results showed that, the diet with T4 had significantly (P<0.05) highest feed intake, heaviest body weight gain, highest eviscerated weight with the highest commercial cuts (breast, drumstick and thigh) followed by T2 and T3 each. The diet with T3 recorded best feed conversion ratio during starter phase and entire experimental period. The birds fed with the control diet recorded significantly (P<0.05) highest abdominal fat weight and liver percentages. The chickens fed on garlic and garlic-ginger mixture showed significant increase in haemoglobin (Hb), white blood cells (WBC), and total protein (TP) in ginger and garlic-ginger mixture. The morality rate was not significantly affected by the addition of mixture of garlic and ginger powder in broiler diets. The highest profitability ratio was obtained by the diet with garlic and ginger mixture powder. It was concluded that using garlic and ginger in combination at 1% enhanced the majority of broiler performances and their carcass quality
