Abstract
In poultry, organic zinc compounds have higher bioavailability than inorganic zinc sources. However, as an organic zinc source, the application of zinc lactate (ZL) on Chinese yellow-feathered broilers has been rarely reported. Hence, the present study aimed to investigate the effects of ZL supplementation on growth performance, small intestinal morphology, serum biochemical parameters, immune organ index, as well as hepatic metallothionein of Chinese yellow-feathered broilers. A total of 2100 broilers (19 days old) were randomly assigned to 5 treatment groups, including the control (fed basal diet), ZL40 (basal diet plus 40 mg/kg ZL), ZL60 (basal diet plus 60 mg/kg ZL), ZL80 (basal diet plus 80 mg/kg ZL), and ZS80 (basal diet plus 80 mg/kg ZS. Each treatment group had 6 replicates with 70 chickens per replicate. Compared to the control group, the ZL40 and the ZS80 groups had a lower feed to gain ratio (P < 0.05), ZL40 group had higher duodenum and ileum villus heights (P < 0.05), and ZS80 and ZL80 groups had a lower ratio of villus height to crypt depth in the jejunum (P < 0.01). In addition, the ZL60 group had a higher concentration of total protein (P < 0.05) and activity of glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) (P < 0.01) compared with the ZS80 and the control groups. Interestingly, the ZL40, ZL60, and ZL80 groups all had higher levels of hepatic metallothionein than the other groups (P < 0.01). In conclusion, zinc lactate had a higher bioavailability and could be used as an alternative to zinc sulfate.
Highlights
Zinc (Zn), as one of the trace minerals, serves as a co-factor of hundreds of endogenous enzymes and thousands of transcription factors involved in the various biochemicalLina Long and Xichen Zhao contributed to this work.1 3 Vol.:(0123456789)Previous studies demonstrated that dietary supplementation of organic zinc increased weight gain and improved the feed efficiency of broilers [2, 8].Zinc lactate (ZL) is organic zinc and has been used in animal diets
The addition of 40 mg/kg zinc lactate and 80 mg/kg zinc sulfate in broiler diet lowered the feed to gain ratio during the early period without affecting the average daily gain (ADG) and average daily feed intake (ADFI), which is partly similar to the previous reports [25,26,27]
A study has reported that ADG, ADFI, and feed conversion ratio of broiler chickens (Ross 308) were not affected by dietary organic zinc supplementation (60 mg/kg and 120 mg/kg) [29], which was similar to ours
Summary
Zinc (Zn), as one of the trace minerals, serves as a co-factor of hundreds of endogenous enzymes and thousands of transcription factors involved in the various biochemical. Previous studies demonstrated that dietary supplementation of organic zinc increased weight gain and improved the feed efficiency of broilers [2, 8]. A previous study revealed that dietary supplementation of zinc lactate (100 mg/kg) significantly improved the small intestinal morphology (increased the villus length and decreased crypt depth), nutrient utilization, and thereby improved the growth performance of pigs [18]. Zinc lactate supplementation (80 mg/kg) improved the small intestinal morphology and growth performance. The present study was carried out to determine the effects of dietary zinc lactate on the growth performance of Chinese yellow feather broilers compared with that of feed-grade zinc sulfate. The optimal dosage of dietary zinc lactate on yellow-feathered broilers would be evaluated as a reference zinc source in a slow-growing broilers diet
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