Effect of Feed Supplementation with Probiotics and Antimicrobial Agents on Meat Quality of Broiler Chickens

Abstract

Background: This study was conducted to determine the effect of supplementing probiotics and antimicrobial agents on the meat quality of broiler chickens. Methods: A complete randomized design was used and 90 male chickens were randomly assigned to five treatments which were replicated 3 times with each replicate having 6 chickens. The treatments had the same nutrients (20% CP and 12MJ/kg) but different supplementation levels of the probiotics and antimicrobial agents. Result: Antimicrobial and effective microorganism supplementations did not have any effect (p greater than 0.05) on feed intake, growth rate and live weights. A significantly lower (p less than 0.05) feed conversion ratio was observed with supplementation of the antimicrobial. Blood glucose levels were optimized at an effective microorganism supplementation level of 29.00 ml of EM/l of drinking water. Supplementation with 100 ml of EMs per litre of drinking water reduced significantly (p less than 0.05) the pH of ileum. Effective microorganism supplementation level of 85.00 ml per litre of drinking water optimized the crop pH value. Antimicrobial and effective microorganism supplementations did not have any influence (p greater than 0.05) on live weight, carcass weight, breast weight, drumstick weight ad thigh weight. Similarly, antimicrobial and effective microorganism supplementations did not have influence on meat tenderness, juiciness and flavour. There were no antibiotic and effective microbe residues in the meat. It is, therefore, concluded that effective microorganism supplementation did not have much effect on production parameters, carcass characteristics and meat quality of Ross 308 broiler chickens.