Responses to dietary levels of methionine in broilers medicated or vaccinated against coccidia under Eimeria tenella-challenged condition

Background: Coccidiosis is a prevalent problem in chicken production. Dietary addition of coccidiostats and vaccination are two approaches used to suppress coccidia in the practical production. Methionine (Met) is usually the first limiting amino acid that plays important roles in protein metabolism and immune functions in chickens. The present study is aimed to investigate whether increasing dietary Met levels will improve the anticoccidial effects in broilers medicated or vaccinated against coccidia under Eimeria (E.) tenella-challenged condition. Two thousand male Partridge Shank broiler chicks were obtained from a hatchery. After hatch, birds were weighed, color-marked and allocated equally into two anticoccidial treatments, namely medicated and vaccinated groups. Chicks were either fed, from 1 d of age, diets containing coccidiostat (narasin) or diets without the coccidiostat but were inoculated with an anticoccidial vaccine at 3 d of age. At 22 d of age, 1080 chicks among them were randomly allocated evenly into 6 groups under a 2 x 3 treatment with 2 anticoccidial programs and 3 dietary methionine (Met) levels. Chicks medicated or vaccinated against coccidia were fed diets containing 0.45%, 0.56% or 0.68% of Met from 22 to 42 d of age. All chicks were orally introduced with an amount of 5 x 10(4) sporulated oocysts of E. tenella at 24 d of age. The growth performance, serum anti-oxidative indexes, intestinal morphology, cecal lesion scores, fecal oocyst counts and immune parameters were measured. Results: The results showed increasing dietary Met level from 0.45% to 0.56% and 0.68% improved weight gain and feed conversion of broilers medicated against coccidia. In contrast, higher dietary levels of Met did not improve growth performance of the vaccinated chickens. Higher Met levels helped the medicated chickens resist E. tenella infection, as indicated by improved intestinal morphology and immune functions as well as decreased cecal lesion and fecal oocyst counts. Conclusions: Anticoccidial vaccination is a better strategy for controlling coccidiosis than feeding narasin, due to not only greater growth performance, but also the lower Met supplementation. Furthermore, higher dietary Met levels improved growth performance of chickens medicated rather than vaccinated against coccidia under E. tenella-challenged condition.