Effect of medium chain fatty acids as replacement to antibiotics in diets on growth performance and gut health in broiler chicken

Due to wide use of Antibiotic growth promoter builds antibiotic resistance in poultry bird. While attempting to explore potential alternative, medium chain fatty acid (MCFA) can be used due to its unique nutritional, physiological and antimicrobial property. MCFA possess activity to inhibit growth of pathogenic organism and increase the digestibility that boosts the production and growth performance of birds. The present experiment was designed to evaluate the effect of medium chain fatty acids supplementation as replacement to antibiotics in diets on growth performance and gut health in broiler.

Three hundred, day-old straight-run chicks were randomly distributed into five dietary treatment groups with three replicates in each containing twenty chicks. The five treatments were, control group (T0), basal diet with antibiotic of BMD (bacitracin methylene disalicyclate) group (T1), basal diet with 0.25% lauric acid (T2), basal diet with 0.25% capric acid (T3) and basal diet with 0.25% lauric and 0.25% capric acids (T4).

The birds fed diet containing lauric acid, capric acid or their combination recorded significantly higher (P<0.01) body weight compared to control. The increase in live weight in birds fed lauric acid over control was 4.37%. Likewise, the broilers fed diets with lauric acid singly or along with capric acid recorded significantly higher gain in weights compared to other groups. The feed intake was comparable in all treatment groups. The feed conversion ratio was improved in broilers fed with MCFAs either singly or in dietary combination. The coliform count was numerically reduced, whereas, the total viable count in group fed MCFAs and their combination were substantially reduced.