Effect of Omega-3 fatty acids enrichment on performance and carcass traits of broiler chicken

Abstract

The experiment was conducted to study the effect of omega-3 fatty acids on performance, carcass traits of broiler chicken. For this purpose, 280 day-old commercial male broiler chicks were randomly divided into seven dietary groups with eight replicates of five birds each (7x8x5) and reared in battery brooders up to 42 days of age following standard management and vaccination schedule. The birds were offered with corn-soya based broiler pre-starter (0-11 days), starter (12-21 days) and finisher (22-42 days) diets. The control diet (T1 ) was prepared with sunflower oil and diets for remaining treatment groups (T2 - T7 ) were formulated by replacing sunflower oil with different levels of linseed oil and fish oil. The experimental design consists of T1 - Control diet with sunflower oil, T2 -linseed oil @ 33% of sunflower oil, T3 - linseed oil @ 67% of sunflower oil, T4 - linseed oil @ 100%, T5 - fish oil @ 33% of sunflower oil, T6 - fish oil @ 67% of sunflower oil and T7 - fish oil @ 100%. The performance of broiler chicken was evaluated in terms of weekly body weight gain (WBWG) and Feed consumption (FC) as influenced by the supplementation of various levels of Linseed and fish oil. At the end of experiment (42nd day) one bird from each replicate (8 birds per treatment) was randomly selected for estimating slaughter parameters. Significant (P<0.05) influence was noticed on the body weight gains of broilers. Feed consumption was not significantly (P>0.05) influenced whereas, FCR was significantly (P<0.05) influenced. The Carcass traits like dressing yield, breast yield, liver and giblet percentage were not influenced, whereas abdominal fat percentage was significantly (P<0.05) influenced by the inclusion of n-3 fatty acid sources. The study indicated that supplementation of n-3 FA (LO or FO) sources at the level of 3.9 per cent did not cause any adverse effects on performance of broilers, carcass characteristics of meat in addition to decrease in abdominal fat percent.