Growth performance and nutrient digestibility of Ross 308 broiler chickens fed diets containing clove bud (Syzygium aromaticum) as a natural feed additive

Abstract

The study was carried out to determine the response of broiler chickens to the use of clove bud (Syzygium aromaticum) as a natural feed additive. One hundred and sixty (160) Ross 308-day-old broiler chicks of mixed sexes were used for the experiment. The birds were weighed and randomly allotted to four treatments with four replicates using the Completely Randomized Design (CRD). Treatment I was the control without clove bud, while treatments 2, 3 and 4 were diets supplemented with 0.40, 0.80 and 1.20% of clove bud respectively. Birds were raised on deep litter. The result of growth performance showed that the daily body weight gain, daily feed intake and feed conversion ratio were not affected significantly (p>0.05) by dietary treatments. This implies that the inclusion of clove bud in broiler chicken diets did not affect their growth performance. Results obtained on the apparent nutrient revealed that the dry matter, crude protein, ash, ether extract and nitrogen-free extract showed no significant (p>0.05) difference among dietary treatment groups except for crude fibre which showed significant (p<0.05) difference among treatments. Basically, from the results obtained from this research, the addition of up to 0.40% clove bud to the diet of broiler chickens is therefore recommended since it did not have a significant negative effect on the overall performance.