Effect of Dietary Supplementation with Probiotics and Prebiotics on Haematological Indices, Serum Chemistry and Gut Salmonella Count of Broilers Sourced from Salmonella-infected Hatcheries in South-west Zone of Nigeria

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of dietary inclusion of probiotics and prebiotics against gut salmonella, haematological indices and serum biochemistry of broilers sourced from Salmonella infected hatcheries within south-west zone of Nigeria. In this experiment, a total of 480 male, day-old broilers (Anak 2000 Strain) (160 birds from each state) were collected from hatcheries located in 3 different areas of south west Nigeria that were positive to Salmonellaorganisms and used for performance testing for 8 weeks. The birds were laid out in a 3x5 factorial arrangement comprising of 3 hatchery location fed diet supplemented with 5 different feed additives (no additive, antibiotics, mannose oligosaccharides, arabinoxylan oligosaccharides, Sim Lac®). Data were collected on blood, and gut salmonella count. Main effect of location showed that total serum protein, white blood cell count, haemoglobin, uric acid and serum creatinine were highest (P<0.05) for broiler starter sourced from Location 3. All broiler starter fed diet supplemented with different additives had reduced (P<0.05) white blood cell, uric acid concentration, increased (P<0.05) serum glucose and albumin. Broiler starter sourced from Location 1 and 3 fed diet supplemented with varying additives had reduced serum uric acid concentration when compared to birds fed control diet. At the finisher phase, haemoglobin, red blood cell, serum uric acid and creatinine concentration were highest for birds sourced from Location 3. Finisher broilers fed diet supplemented with varying additive had increased (P<0.05) serum albumin and reduced (P<0.05) serum uric acid concentration. Finisher broilers sourced from location 3 and fed diet supplemented with additive had reduced (P<0.05) white blood cell count, serum uric acid and increased (P<0.05) serum albumin when compared with group on control diet. In all the phases of the study, gut salmonella reduced drastically with inclusion of various additives. Birds fed diet supplemented with mannas oligosaccharide showed the least gut salmonella count. Mannose oligosaccharides and arabinoxylan oligosaccharides could be used as replacement for antibiotics to improve performance and control the prevalence of Salmonellaorganism in broiler chickens.