Evaluating Organic Acids as Alternatives to Antibiotic Growth Promoters in Enhancing the Performance of Broiler Chicken

Antibiotic growth promoters (AGP) are still widely used to improve gut health and growth performance in the global poultry industry. The continuous and excessive use of AGPs has been thought to decrease the efficacy of AGPs and threaten public health by spreading antibiotic resistant bacteria. The study was conducted to investigate the effect of organic acids (OAs) to substitute AGPs on the growth performance parameters of broiler chickens. A total of 150 unsexed day old broiler chicks (Cobb 500) were randomly allocated into five treatments with three replicates containing 10 chicks each. Group T0 served as control while the groups T1, T2 and T3 were supplemented with different organic acids (citric acid, formic acid and acetic acid, respectively). However, the group T4 received AGP (oxytetracycline hydrochloride) at the appropriate dosage (1g/1L). The feeding trial lasted for 28 days. The results of the experiment revealed that OAs and AGPs supplementation significantly (p˂0.01) improved feed conversion ratio (FCR) than control group. Besides, birds from T1, T2 and T3 groups had significantly higher (p<0.05) body weight gain (BWG) compared to control and AGP groups. Considering the whole experimental period, T1 and T3 groups had a significantly (p˂0.01) improved FCR than T0, T2 and T4 groups. In conclusion, OAs are more efficient than AGPs in improving broiler growth performance and could be successfully used to substitute AGPs in broiler diets, though the effect of all OA mixtures were not same on performance. More research is required to compare the use of organic acid combinations with antibiotics under various experimental situations.