Effects of fermented garlic powder supplementation on growth performance, blood profiles and breast meat quality in broilers

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of dietary supplementation with fermented garlic powder (FGP) on growth performance, blood profiles and breast meat quality in broilers. A total of 500 broilers were randomly allotted to 4 treatments with 5 replications per treatment and 25 chicks per pen. The experiment lasted for 5 weeks and dietary treatments were as follows: 1) CON (basal diet); 2) FGP1 (basal diet + 1 g/kg fermented garlic powder); 3) FGP2 (basal diet +2 g/kg fermented garlic powder); 4) FGP4 (basal diet + 4 g/kg fermented garlic powder). No effects were observed (P>0.05) in body weight gain (BWG), feed intake (FI) or feed conversion ratio (FCR) throughout the whole experiment. The white blood cell (WBC) counts, lymphocyte and immunoglobulin G (IgG) was increased (P<0.05) in response to FGP treatments. Broilers had lower (P<0.05) total cholesterol, triglyceride, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol and cortisol concentrations in blood when they were provided with FGP2 and FGP4 diets. Compared with CON, FGP2 and FCP4 treatments decreased (P<0.05) TBARS and pH in breast meat. In conclusion, FGP administration had no effect on growth performance but improved immunity and meat quality as well as decreased cholesterol and cortisol in blood. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V.