Rohollah Ebrahimi; Tahereh Mohammadabadi; Mohsen Sari; Somayeh Sallari; Mohammadjavad Zamiri; Mohammadtaghi Beigi Nassiri
Volume 15, Issue 2 , October 2013, , Pages 127-138
Abstract
In order to investigate the effect of different levels of silymarin (0, 100 and 200 mg/kg diet) onperformance, carcass characteristics, blood parameters and antioxidant status, 120 day-old chicks wereassigned to 3 treatments with four replicates and 10 birds in each in a completely randomized design.Results ...
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In order to investigate the effect of different levels of silymarin (0, 100 and 200 mg/kg diet) onperformance, carcass characteristics, blood parameters and antioxidant status, 120 day-old chicks wereassigned to 3 treatments with four replicates and 10 birds in each in a completely randomized design.Results showed supplementation of 200 mg silymarin significantly decreased the body weight gain(BWG) in starter (P<0.05) and whole period of experiment (P<0.01) and significantly increased feedconversion ratio at starter (P<0.05), grower (P<0.05) and total rearing periods (P<0.01). Also, addition of100 mg silymarin significantly increased the carcass relative weight (P<0.01) and supplementation of 200mg silymarin significantly increased the breast relative weight (P<0.05). Furthermore, 200 mg silymarinsignificantly increased the malondialdehyde and heterophil/ lymphocyte ratio and significantly decreasedsuperoxide dismutase (P<0.05). These results showed that supplementation of silymarin in diet undernormal condition, improved the carcass and breast relative weight, but no had effect on bird’s oxidativestatus.