PAPER TITLE :GROWTH PERFORMANCE AND IMMUNE STATUS OF BROILER CHICKENS FED GRADED LEVELS FF METHIONINE SUPPLEMENTE

JOURNAL Of SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGY | VOLUME 6 NUMBER 2 2015

Paper Details

  • Author(s) : FALUYI, O. B
  • Abstract:

The growth performance and immunological response to Newcastle disease
vaccinations of broiler chickens fed varying levels of methionine supplemented diets were
investigated in this study. A total of two hundred (200) birds were raised from day-old to eight
weeks. They were distributed into four treatments A, B, C and D with 5 replicates per treatment,
each replicate having 10 birds. There were four experimental diets; Diet A was the control diet and
contained a standard of 0.37% methionine, diet B was the diet containing 0.5% methionine as
recommended by National Research Council (NRC) while diets C and D contained 0.55% and
0.58% methionine supplementary levels which were 10% and 15% increment over NRC
requirement respectively. Results showed that the weight of birds fed 0.5% and 0.55% methionine
were not significantly different (P>0.05) but were significantly (P<0.05) higher than those fed the
other test diets. The birds on 0.55% and 0.58% methionine best utilized their diets, better than
those fed the NRC required methionine. The immunological responses after vaccination with
Newcastle disease vaccine intra-ocular (NDV i/o) revealed that chickens fed with 0.55% methionine
recorded the highest antibody titre value (log
28) while those fed the control diet had the lowest
mean titre value (log26). Also, administration of NDV LaSota and infection with ND antigen elicited
immune responses that were highest in birds fed diet containing 0.5% methionine with antibody
titre values of log29 and log210 respectively. The haematological parameters were only significantly
(P<0.05) different for packed cell volume (PCV), haemoglobin concentration (HB), mean cell volume
(MCV) and mean cell haemoglobin (MCH) values while only the total serum protein was significantly
(P <0.05) affected among the serum metabolites measured. It was concluded that supplementing
methionine above NRC requirement at 10% compared well with that of NRC requirement with
respect to performance characteristics and immune response in broiler chickens.