Abstract
The objectives of the study were to investigate the effects of feeding probiotics supplemented diets with or without antibiotic growth promoter on growth performance, carcass characteristics and cost-effectiveness of commercial broilers. A gable type open sided house was used for experimental purpose. Three hundred twenty Cobb-500 one- day-old straight run chicks were randomly distributed into four dietary groups having five replications. The number of birds in each replication was 16. Four diets were considered: diet 1: control; diet 2: antibiotic growth promoter (AGP) at a dose of 15g/100kg; diet 3: probiotics (PB) at a dose of 250g/100kg and diet 4: AGP plus PB (15g/100kg+250g/100kg). Birds were vaccinated against common viral diseases as a part of disease prevention program. The records were kept of body weight, feed intake and mortality while weight gain, feed conversion ratio (FCR) and survivability were calculated. Both performance and carcass yield were statistically analyzed for interpretation. Broiler chicks that received PB showed significant improvement in performance (P<0.01) over control with respect to body weight gain, FCR, carcass yield and cost-effectiveness. Feeding AGP alone had comparatively less weight gain, net profit and almost similar feed efficiency compared with PB and AGP+PB groups but its performance was much better than that of control group. The PB fed group showed better meat yield traits. The PB alone group was also more cost effective over control. Feeding PB may be practiced in broiler diet as an alternative to AGP.
 Asian J. Med. Biol. Res. September 2020, 6(3): 400-407
Highlights
The term probiotics derived from Greek word “pro bios” which means “in favor of life” (Coppola and Turnes, 2004)
At the end of 35 days of age, the highest FLW (2014.50g/b) was found in broilers fed with both antibiotic growth promoter and probiotics (AGP+PB). This was followed by broiler belonging to probiotics (1913.06g/b), antibiotic (1848.25g/b) and control group (1707.20g/b) respectively
Highest amount of feed was consumed by AGP+PB fed group and lowest amount of feed was consumed by AGP fed group
Summary
The term probiotics derived from Greek word “pro bios” which means “in favor of life” (Coppola and Turnes, 2004). Probiotics seem to be good alternatives to the use of antibiotics as growth promoters (Tomasik and Tomasik, 2003), which have been used on poultry and livestock in an attempt to increase mean weight gain (Tannock et al, 1999). Several microorganisms have been considered or used as probiotics including fungi mushroom and yeast, bacteria and mixed cultures comprising of various microbes. Probiotic species such as Lactobacillus, Streptococcus, Bacillus, Bifidobacterium, Enterococcus, Aspergillus, Candida, and Saccharomyces are widely used to prevent poultry pathogens and diseases and improve broiler’s growth performance (Timmerman et al, 2006; Mountzouris et al, 2007; Awad et al, 2009). Bacteria are more commonly reported as probiotics than fungi. A widely used probiotics strain, combination of Bacillus subtilis and Bacilluslicheniformis are considered one of the most health-boosting bacteria because they have demonstrated a positive effect in
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