Journal
ANIMAL FEED SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Volume 207, Issue -, Pages 104-111Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.anifeedsci.2015.05.021
Keywords
Japanese quail; Performance; Intestinal morphology; Heal bacterial count
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An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of dietary Mentha piperita L. (MP, peppermint) on growth performance, carcass characteristics, ileal morphology and intestinal bacterial populations of growing Japanese quails. A total of 360, 7-day-old quail chicks were fed six experimental diets (with 5 replicates and 12 birds each) including a basal diet with no antibiotics (negative control), the basal diet with subtherapeutic amount of flavophospholipol (positive control), MPI (basal diet + 10 g/kg peppermint), MPII (basal diet + 20 g/kg peppermint), MPIII (basal diet +30 g/kg peppermint), and MPIV (basal diet + 40 g/kg peppermint) for 5 weeks. Dietary treatments did not affect bird performance, however, feed intake (P= 0.09) and feed conversion ratio (P= 0.06) in peppermint groups showed an incremental trends from 7 to 35 days of age. Inclusion of peppermint in the diet linearly increased the length of small intestine, villus height, villus width, crypt depth, and villus area (P< 0.001). Regression analysis showed that the maximum villus area and CFU of LAB may be obtained with 28.9 (R-2 = 0.82) and 28.9 g/kg of dietary peppermint (R-2 = 0.93), respectively. However, the minimum CFU of coliforms may be achieved with 22.0 g/kg of dietary peppermint (R-2 = 0.50). From the results of present study, it can be concluded that peppermint at the rate of 20-30 g/kg of diet could be a promising alternative to antibiotics in order to improve intestinal bacterial populations and absorption surface area in growing Japanese quails. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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