Evaluating the Effects of Different Levels of Medicinal Plant Powder of Teucrium Polium on Performance, Carcass Characteristics, Intestinal Morphology and Antioxidant Status of Blood Serum in Broiler

Abstract

This study was done to evaluate the effects of different levels of powdered medicinal plant of Teucrium polium on performance, carcass characteristics, intestinal morphology and antioxidant status of blood serum in broiler. For this experiment, 180 one-day old broilers of Soye of 308- Ras were randomly allotted with 5 treatments and 3 replicates (12 broilers per replicate). Experimental treatments consisted of: 1) basal ration without additives as a control, 2) treatment with 0.5% Teucrium powder, 3) treatment with 1% Teucrium powder, 4) treatment with 1.5% Teucrium powder and 5) treatment containing 2% Teucrium powder. The results showed that the use of Teucrium powder had no significant effect on feed intake and feed conversion ratio (P<0.05). Although level of 1.5% significantly increased the weight in growing period and the level of 2% significantly decreased weight during the beginning and total period of experiment (P >0.05). Birds recipient of Teucrium powder had no significant difference in carcass components and different parts of the intestine (P<0.05), except the level of 2% that decreased the percent of breast and increased the percent of gizzard. Treatments containing 1.5 and 2% of Teucrium were significantly increased the antioxidant capacity of total blood serum (P>0.05), but the level of malondialdehyde was not affected by experimental treatments (P<0.05). The present research's results indicated that the use of Teucrium powder improves growth performance, antioxidant status in broilers.