Effect of Azolla feeding on the growth, feed conversion ratio, blood biochemical attributes and immune competence traits of growing turkeys

Vet World Vol.11 April-2018 Article-8

Research Article

Veterinary World, 11(4): 459-463

https://doi.org/10.14202/vetworld.2018.459-463

Mayank Shukla¹, Amitav Bhattacharyya¹, Pankaj Kumar Shukla¹, Debashis Roy², Brijesh Yadav³, and Rajneesh Sirohi⁴

1. Department of Poultry Science, College of Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry, Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, India.
2. Department of Animal Nutrition, College of Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry, Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, India.
3. Department of Veterinary Physiology, College of Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry, Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, India.
4. Livestock Production and Management, College of Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry, Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, India.

Background and Aim: In the recent past, few studies have been carried out in chicken to assess the effect of Azolla meal and raw Azolla feeding on the performance of chicken. If turkeys effectively use unconventional feedstuffs like Azolla without reducing the performance, it will increase the profitability of turkey business. Hence, a study was carried out to evaluate the effect of dried Azolla pinnata vis-a-vis raw Azolla as choice feeding on the growth, feed conversion ratio (FCR), blood biochemical attributes, and immune competence traits of growing turkeys under intensive system.

Materials and Methods: A total of 72, 8-week-old grower turkey poults of black variety were randomly distributed into three dietary treatments having three replicates each with eight birds. The birds of the control group (T1) were fed a basal diet (CP - 19.71% and ME - 2789.79 Kcal/kg), while the other group (T2) and choice-feeding group (T3) were fed 5% of basal diet replaced by dry Azolla powder on DM basis and ad libitum Azolla along with basal diet, respectively.

Results: There was no significant difference among the different groups in the average weekly weight gain during the entire experiment. FCR was significantly better (p<0.05) in the choice-feeding group compared to the other two experimental groups during 8-16 weeks of age. There was no significant difference among the treatment groups in any of the blood biochemical indices except plasma uric acid, which was significantly decreased (p<0.01) in T2 compared to T1 at 16 weeks of age. HA and IgM response to 1% sheep red blood cells (log2 titer) were numerically better in T2 and T3 compared to the T1.

Conclusion: Thus, it may be inferred that choice feeding with Azolla, and basal diet may improve FCR without any adverse effect on blood biochemical attributes and immune competence traits. Keywords: Azolla, biochemical attributes, body weight, immunity, turkeys.

Keywords: Azolla, biochemical attributes, body weight, immunity, turkeys.

How to cite this article: Shukla M, Bhattacharyya A, Shukla PK, Roy D, Yadav B, Sirohi R (2018) Effect of Azolla feeding on the growth, feed conversion ratio, blood biochemical attributes and immune competence traits of growing turkeys, Veterinary World, 11(4): 459-463.

Received: 31-10-2017 Accepted: 03-03-2018 Published online: 11-04-2018

Corresponding author: Amitav Bhattacharyya E-mail: amitav16@rediffmail.com

DOI: 10.14202/vetworld.2018.459-463

Copyright: Shukla, et al. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.