Efficacy of herbal immunomodulator and antistressor products on the performance and cost economics of broilers during summer stress

Abstract

The effect of different herbal immune modulators and antistressor products on the performance and cost economics of broilers was investigated. For this, 180 day-old commercial straight run broiler chicks were randomly divided into six treatment groups with six replicates of five birds each. The experimental design consisted of; T1 control diet, T2: Stressroak liquid, T3: AV/ESL/16 liquid, T4: Stressroak premix, T5: Geriforte liquid, T6: Stresscheck. The results indicated that cumulative body weight gains were significantly (P 0.05) difference was noticed during pre-starter phase. No significant difference was observed in feed intake during all the phases. All the herbal products significantly improved feed conversion ratio during starter and finisher phases compared to control. Supplementation of herbal immunomodulators yielded higher returns over feed cost than the control. The highest return per bird was recorded with Stressroak liquid (Rs.18.47/bird) followed by AV/ESL/16 Liquid (Rs.7.20/bird), Stresscheck (Rs.7.14/bird) and Stressroak premix (Rs. 4.41/bird) groups. Dietary supplementation of Stressroak herbal liquid improved the performance of broilers compared to other treatments under summer stress.