Oral administration of nucleosides improved the performance and gut health in broiler chickens

Manojkumar, V., Gopi, M., Rokade, J.J., Shyamkumar, T.S., Prabakar, G., Beulah, P.V., Kolluri, G and Tyagi, J.S. 2020. Oral administration of nucleosides improved the performance and gut health in broiler chickens. Indian Journal of Poultry Science, 55(1): 37–41.

A preliminary experiment was carried out with broiler chicks to assess the effect of individual nucloside bases (Adenosine, Guanosine, Cytosine and Uridine) and combination of all at the level of 0.1% supplementation. The bases were administered orally daily for initial 14 days of age in the early morning before feeding and watering. The body weight change and feed intake were recorded at weekly. The birds were sacrificed at weekly interval to assess the intestinal digestive enzymes (amylase and lipase) activities, gross morphology and intestinal villi histometry. The body weight showed numerical increase during the second week (183, 226.5, 158.5, 185.5, 191.5 and 183.5 g respectively) of age due to supplementation but not in first week. The feed intake and feed efficiency were similar (P>0.05) among the six groups in both weeks. No significant changes in intestinal length, intestinal weight and liver weight. The intestinal enzymes amylase (280 vs 332 U/L) and lipase (98.5 vs 141.96 U/L) also showed a numerical increase in activity due to supplementation. The supplementation of combination of nucleosides improved the body weight gain and gut development in broiler chickens.