Effect of mushroom powder and flavophospholipol oncarcass in broiler chickens

Abstract

After  showed  its  beneficial  effects  on  chicken  growth  performance,  a  study  was  conducted  to  evaluate  the  effect  ofadding  from  birth  and  during  the  whole  growth  period,  flavophospholipol  and  edible  mushrooms  powder on  carcasscharacteristics,  viscera  weights  and  digestive  tract  measurements  of  male  broiler  chicken.  A  total  of  300  one-day-old  male  broiler  chicks  were  randomly  distributed  into  1  to  10  treatments  with  three  replicates  per treatment  and10 chicks per pen. The experiment consisted in a 2 x 5 factorial arrangement of treatments including five concentrationsof mushrooms powder (0, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 g/kg of diet) and the addition of 0.0 or 5.0 mg/kg of flavophospholipolfrom  birth  date  to  slaughter  time  at  42-d.  Results  show  that  the  additions  of  dietary  mushroom  powder  andflavophospholipol  have  a  positive  effect  on  weights  of  carcass  parts  with  commercial  importance  as  the  breast  anddrumsticks.  In  contrast,  there  is  no  effect  on  wings  weight.  Regarding  viscera  weights,  mushroom  powder  but  notflavophospholipol or the interaction of both, affected the thymus, spleen, bursa of Fabricius and liver weights. Finally,despite  weak  statistically  significant  results  on  several  measurements  of  the  digestive  tract,  results  show  no  effectof  mushroom  powder  or  the  antibiotic  addition  on  these  variables.