An experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of dietary supplementation Rare Earth, individually and in combination with Colloidal Silver in the basal diet on growth performance, nutrient digestibility, carcass characteristics and immune resp...
An experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of dietary supplementation Rare Earth, individually and in combination with Colloidal Silver in the basal diet on growth performance, nutrient digestibility, carcass characteristics and immune response in broiler chicks. The treatments were control diet (T1); control diet+20ppb Colloidal Silver (T2); control diet+500ppm Rare Earth (T3); control diet +20ppb Colloidal Silver+500ppm Rare Earth (T4). There were no significant differences(p>0.05) in feed intake and feed conversion ratio(FCR) among dietary treatments during the whole experimental period(0 to 5 weeks). Body weight gain and apparent digestibility of dry matter, crude protein, ether extract and calcium were greatest in T4(p<0.05), while apparent digestibility of phosphorus was lowest in T3( p<0.05). There was no significant difference(p>0.05) in bone strength. Dry matter content of bone was greatest in T4(p <0.05), and phosphorus content of bone composition was greater in T3 than in T2 and T4(p<0.05). There were no significant differences(p>0.05) in carcass characteristics and immune response. Therefore, this experiment suggested that Rare Earth supplementation, individually and in combination with Colloidal Silver could improve performance of broilers.