h. a. ghasemi

Today, in the poultry industry, food additives are used to achieve the highest production at the lowest cost. Growth stimulants and food additives are chemical, biological, or natural compounds added to water and feed. They are used to improve growth and feed efficiency and obtain the highest and most economical production. The use of medicinal plants in poultry nutrition showed that, in addition to stimulating feed consumption, these plants also have antibiotic and anti-coccidiosis properties. This experiment aimed to investigate the effects of different levels of the herbal Bilhar (Dorema aucheri Boiss.) on the Production Parameters, hematology, and thigh and breast meat quality traits of broiler chickens in a completely randomized design.

In this study, 240 one-day-old Ross 308 were exposed to five treatments (four replicates), and 12 chickens in each replicate were raised for 42 days. The chickens had free access to water and feed during the rearing period. The necessary care was following scientific rearing principles and commercial catalog recommended methods. The experimental treatments included 1) control-common diet with no additive 2) control diet + 0.1% flavophospholipol antibiotic, 3) control diet + Bilhar (0.1 % in starter and grower, 0.05 % in finisher phase), 4) control diet + Bilhar (0.3 % in starter and grower, 0.15 % finisher phase), 3) control diet + Bilhar (0.5 % in starter and grower,0 .25 % in finisher phase). The experiment measured body weight and food consumption at the end of the initial, growth, and final periods. On the 42nd day, one chicken from each replicate was randomly selected and blood was collected through the wing vein. Two blood samples, one into the venoject tubes containing 0.5 cc of the anticoagulant ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA), to collect and measure blood hematological parameters (the amount of red blood cells, white blood cells, hemoglobin, hematocrit and the subtracted population of white blood cells) and the other part of the blood into tubes free of anticoagulants in order to separate the blood serum, to measure the metabolites Serum biochemical tests were transferred.

Chick's body weight at 24 and 42 d was higher in the first Bilhar group and antibiotic level than in the control group. Different experimental groups significantly affected feed intake at the starter and grower phases (P> 0.05). Adding bilhar to the diet did not change red blood cell numbers but impacted hemoglobin, hematocrit percentages, and white blood cell count. Different levels of Bilher powder and antibiotics significantly influenced villus height, villus thickness, and villus area in the duodenum (P<0.05). But the depth of the crypt and the ratio of the height of the villi to the depth of the crypt in the duodenum did not show a statistically significant effect between the treatments (P<0.05). Despite no significant improvement in breast water holding capacity, dripping loss, or cooking loss, dietary billiards significantly decreased breast PH. Experimental treatments significantly affected thigh water holding capacity, dripping loss, and pH but did not affect thigh cooking loss.

It can be concluded that in the case of most traits, especially functional traits, the first level of bilhar (treatment 3) improved compared to the control treatment. Therefore, this plant can be used at the indicated level as a plant additive in a broiler chicken diet. This will improve functional and histological traits.

The goal of genome-wide association (GWA) studies of quantitative traits is to identify genomic regions that explain a substantial proportion of the genetic variation for the trait, with the ultimate goal to identify causal mutations underlying the genetic basis of the trait. The standard GWA approach is to genotype a population that has been phenotyped for the trait(s) of interest and genotyped for many genetic markers across the genome and to analyze these data by estimating and testing the effects of marker genotypes on phenotypes using a regression-type of analysis for each single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), one at a time. Bayesian methods such as Bayes A and Bayes B assume a heavy tail prior distribution for SNP effects and use Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) to sample from the posterior distribution. Although the objective of these methods was to predict the breeding value of selection candidates (genomic breeding values), they do that by estimating the effects of all SNPs. The estimated SNP effect, the proportion of variance explained by a SNP, or the number of times the SNP fits in the model with non–zero effect can be used as criteria to identify locations or genomic regions that affect the trait of interest. Results have shown that these Bayesian methods can effectively detect QTL in simulated and real data. Recently, a new methodology has been developed to address this limitation and allow for a better understanding of the genetic architecture of complex traits through a gene network analysis. For this purpose, to identify genomic regions and candidate genes associated with egg weight (EW), a genome-wide association study (GWAS) was performed in the present study using Affymetrix 600 K high density SNP array in 1,078 hens of 11th generation of Rhode Island Red. Data available for 1,078 pedigree-recorded hens were used to collect phenotypic EW-related data. Seven traits, including egg weight at the first laying of hens, and egg weight at 28, 36, 56, 66, 72, and 80 weeks of age were collected for each bird.  The analyses were performed using GenSel v4.73R, by fitting covariates for haplotype alleles in BayesA and BayesB models. A single Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) chain of length 41,000, including burn-in of 1,000 first iterations, was computed for each analysis to obtain posterior estimates of covariate effects. These were used to obtain a direct genetic variance for animals. The primary analysis showed that correlations and regression coefficients had converged at this chain length. Annotation terms and pathway analyses were conducted using protein analysis through evolutionary relationships of PANTHER software version 10.0. The results showed that the BayesA method performed better in explaining additive genetic variance compared to BayesB method. Nine markers obtained from BayesA with the highest additive genetic variance were located on chromosomes 1, 3, 5, and 20. Genes that overlap in regions of interest were identified with the Ensembl BioMart data mining (http://www.ensembl.org/biomart/) based on the Galgal6 assembly and the Ensembl Genes 96 database. The detected SNPs were located close to 35 genes, among which, the candidate genes of BPIFB2, OCX36, CPT1A, TCF15, CECR2, SIAH3, FADS1, FADS2, and SGK1 play important functions in the egg production process through the albumen protein formation, fatty acids metabolism, and eggshell formation. It is noteworthy that the present study has detected an association in regions different from that reported by previous studies. This can be because of flock particularities, such as the extent of linkage disequilibrium, allelic frequencies, and statistical approaches. The results of the present study showed that when the genetic architecture of studied traits follows infinitesimal model assumptions, the BayesA method usually performs better than BayesB. Moreover, considering the identification of new genome regions and the key role of the mentioned genes on the development of egg weight, the efficiency of the BayesA method can be confirmed for GWAS in egg weight traits.

To evaluate the effect of hydroalcoholic extract of Scrophularia striata (SSE), vitamin E, vitamin C, and selenium on performance, blood parameters, and immune response of broilers under heat stress conditions, an experiment was performed using 350 one-day-old male broilers (Ross 308) in a completely randomized design with seven treatments and five replicates (10 chickens per replicate). Experimental groups were a group under normal environmental conditions (negative control), a group under heat stress (positive control), and other groups under heat stress and fed with the diet supplemented with 200 ppm vitamin E, 500 ppm vitamin C, 0.3 ppm selenium, or 200 and 400 ppm SSE. From day 1 to the end of the breeding period, a temperature of 34 ± 2 °C was applied to create heat stress for 8 h (10 am to 6 pm). The results showed that all treatments improved (P<0.05) body weight gain, feed conversion ratio, performance index, heterophil to lymphocyte ratio, total and IgG titers against sheep red blood cells, and cellular immunity (toe web swelling skin in response to phytohemagglutinin injection), and the best performance was observed in the negative control, high SSE and vitamin E, respectively. All experimental treatments, except for low SSE and selenium treatments, increased blood lymphocytes and potassium compared to the positive treatment (P<0.05). In general, the inclusion of 400 ppm of SSE in the diet had a beneficial effect on growth performance, blood parameters, and immune response during heat stress.

This study was performed to investigate the effect of dietary supplementation with Manna of Alhaji Maurum (Tarangabin) powder on performance, carcass traits, serum biochemistry, and jejunum histology parameters in broilers. The experiment was arranged in two separate sections, in the first section, 400, day-old male broilers (Ross 308) were randomly assigned to five treatments with four replicates. The dietary treatments consisted of the basal diet as control, control + 0.5% Manna in starter, control + 0.5% Manna in starter and grower, control + 1% Manna in starter, control + 1% Manna in starter and grower. In this experiment, supplementing the diet with 0.5% Manna in starter and grower periods increased the body weight of broilers at 10, 24, and 42 days of age (P<0.05). The higher average daily gain was observed at 1-10, 11-24, and 1-42 days of age with 1% Manna treatment in starter and grower periods. The treatment of 1% Manna in the starter period had the greatest villus height that had a significant difference with control treatment (P<0.05). It can be concluded that 0.5% Manna in starter and grower periods can be used as an additive for improving performance traits and 1% Manna in starter for jejunum morphology traits in broilers.

To investigate the effects of different levels of powder and essential oil of Boswellia sacra (BS) leaves on the intestinal microflora and some blood parameters in Japanese quail chicks, an experiment was conducted in a completely randomized design with six treatments and three replications. The experimental treatments included T1: base diet without additives (control), T2: base diet+ antibiotic bacitracin, T3: base diet+ 1 g of BS powder per kg of diet, T4: base diet+ 2 g of BS powder per kg of diet, T5: base diet+ 20 mg of BS essential oil per kg of diet, and T6: base diet+ 40 mg of BS essential oil per kg of diet. The results showed that the blood glucose concentration in T5 was significantly higher than T3 and T4 (p < /em><0.05). The highest concentration of high-density lipoproteins was observed in the blood of birds in T4 (p < /em><0.05). The population of Bifidobacterium spp. showed a significant increase (p < /em><0.05) in T2, T3, T5, and T6 compared to the control and T4. Treatments T3 and T6 exhibited a higher population of Lactobacillus spp. compared to the control, T2, T4, and T5 (p < /em><0.05). A higher population of Streptococcus spp. was also observed in T3 and T6 compared to T4 (p < /em><0.05). Overall, the results showed that the use of additive essential oil extracted from BS leaves in the concentration of 40 mg per kg of diet could improve the intestinal microbial population.

The aim of the present study was to conduct a genome wide association studies (GWAS) based on gene set enrichment analysis for identifying the loci associated with body weight in four chicken breeds including Chahua, Silkie, Langshan, and Beard using the high throughput single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Phenotypic and genotypic data were obtained from the Frontiersin online public repository. In this study, the 402 cocks and hens were used with body weight from 1 to 15 weeks using GenABEL software. The gene enrichment analysis was performed with the goseq R package. In the next step, a bioinformatics analysis was implemented to identify the biological pathways performed in GO, KEEG, DAVID and PANTHER databases. Ten SNP markers on  chromosomes 1, 2, 5, 7, 10, 14, 18, 19, 20 and 27 located in ABCG1, MYOD1, MYH10, MYH11, MYO1B, MYO1C, MYO1E, MYL1, MYL2, MYL3, SLC2A8, ACACA, ACOX1, ACOX2, and PNPLA2 genes were identified. Some of the genes were found are consistent with some previous studies and to be involved in biological pathways related to body weight. According to pathway analysis, 17 pathways from gene ontology and KEGG pathway were associated with the body weight (P˂0.01). Among those pathways, the cytoskeletal protein binding, anatomical structure development and tricarboxylic acid cycle had significant association with skeletal muscle fiber and metabolism lipid traits. In total, this study supported previous results from GWAS of body weight; also revealed additional regions in the chicken genome associated with these economically important traits. The use of these findings can accelerate the genetic progress in the breeding programs.

Many researches have been conducted to find suitable alternatives for antibiotics and were all looking for additives that could produce similar results in the control of infectious diseases, improving the growth performance and feed efficiency. Essential oils and herbal extracts are considered as one of the main sources of natural pharmaceutical compounds with anti-microbial and anti-inflammatory properties. In the study of Rostami et al. (2015), it has been shown that dietary supplementation with Scrophularia striata powder at the level of 0.8 % of diet improved performance and immune response of meat-type chickens when compared with antibiotic supplement. However, due to the lack of research about the influence of S. striata extract on broiler performance, this study was conducted to evaluate the effect of S. striata extract on male broiler growth performance, blood biochemistry and hematology, and to compare them with three feed additives (antibiotic, probiotic and vitamin E + vitamin C + selenium complex). A total number of 450 one-day-old male Ross 308 broiler chicks were divided into 30 groups of 15 chicks each (six treatments and five replicates per treatment). The six experimental treatments were as follows: corn – soybean meal basal diet with no additives (control diet) and basal diet containing salinomycin antibiotic, probiotic, vitamin E + vitamin C + selenium complex (VS, 200 mg/kg vitamin E and C and 0.3 mg/kg selenium), 200 and 400 mg/kg S. striata extract (SSE1 and SSE2). Feed intake (FI) and body weight gain (BWG) were recorded in each phase feeding periods as starter (0-10 d), grower (11-24 d) and finisher (25-42 d) and feed conversion ratio (FCR) was calculated. To study the effects of different treatments on blood biochemistry and hematology, blood samples of two birds from each replicate were collected from the wing vein at the end of experiment. Samples containing EDTA were stored in ice box and immediately transferred to the laboratory for analyses. The other samples were centrifuged at 2,000×g for 10 min and frozen at −20°C until analysis. The red blood cell (RBC) and white blood cell (WBC) counts were determined by a hemocytometer method using Natt–Herrick solution; hematocrit (packed cell volume) and hemoglobin values were measured by microhematocrit and cyanmethemoglobin methods, respectively (Kececi et al. 1998). To determine blood leukocyte profiles, 100 leukocytes per samples were counted by an optical microscope according to protocol described by Lucas and Jamroz (1961). The heterophil (H)/lymphocyte (L) ratio was then calculated. Biochemical parameters consisted of glucose, total protein, albumin, uric acid, triglyceride, total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), very-low-density lipoprotein (VLDL-C), and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDLC), lipase, calcium and phosphorus. All analyses were made using the commercial kits (Pars Azmoon, Iran) and a standard auto analyzer apparatus (Biotecnica, BT-3000, Rome, Italia), except for calcium. Calcium (Ca) value was determined by the atomic absorption spectrophotometer (Shimadzu AA-6200, Tokyo, Japan). The data were analyzed in a completely randomized design by ANOVA using the General Linear Model (GLM) procedure of SAS Institute. In the grower (days 11–24) and the overall (days 1–42) experimental periods, the FI of the SSE1 and SSE2 groups was lower (P < 0.05) compared with the control group. During the finisher (25-42 d) and whole experimental periods, the BWG and FCR were better (P < 0.05) in all experimental treatments compared with control group, where the birds fed diet SSE1 and SSE2 had the best BWG and FCR. The blood protein and albumin in the birds fed diet SSE2 was significantly higher than in birds fed the control and antibiotic diets. All diets, except diet M, decreased cholesterol and LDL levels compared with the control diet. Feeding SSE1 and SSE2 diets increased blood phosphorus concentration and blood lipase activity protein deposition; additionally, feeding SSE2 diet significantly increased blood calcium level. Furthermore, broilers fed the antibiotic and SSE2 diets had higher blood hemoglobin level and lower WBC counts compared with VS treatment (P < 0.01). The birds fed any of the diets, except diet SSE1, exhibited lower H/L ratio than those fed the control diet. The better BWG and FCR in broilers which fed 200 and 400 mg/kg S. striata extract reveals that the impact of phytogenic products on performance could be related to the presence of growth-promoting substances in these herbs. In general, an improvement in FCR of chickens when feeding herbal products has been proven in the majority of the studies recently reviewed by Brenes and Roura (2010), who indicated that in most researches the improvement in FCR comes as a result of decreasing in FI at a largely unaffected BWG. However, in this study S. striata extract-containing treatments not only decreased FI, but also increased BWG. Polyphenolic compounds inhibit the activity of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase (HMG-CoA) enzyme; hence, the synthesis of cholesterol is inhibited. This action increases the LDL receptors at the surface of the hepatocytes and, as a result, accelerate LDL catabolism. HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors, reduce blood LDL, and to a lesser extent, blood triglyceride concentrations and slightly increase HDL concentrations (Barreto et al., 2008). Monsef-Esfahani et al. (2010) discovered that the essential oils and extracts from S. striata contain quercetin, which have important antioxidant activity. Therefore, enhanced lymphocyte percentage and decreased H/L ratio by the SSE2 treatment, along with the cell protection against oxidative stress, seemed to contribute to the higher WBC count reported in this study. According to the results, the 400 mg/kg S. striata extract can be used as an alternative to antibiotics and other commonly used additives at the level of to the diet of broiler chickens.

Canola meal contains high levels of non-starch polysaccharides, which can reduce its energy bioavailability. This experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of different substitution levels of soybean meal with canola meal with or without enzyme β-mannanase on performance, egg quality characteristics, internal organs weight, bone ash and thyroxin hormone level. In this study, 216 Leghorn Hy-Line laying hens, at 37 wk of age, were assigned into 6 experimental groups. A 2×3 factorial experiment based on completely randomized design was performed with 6 replications for 10 wk. The treatments consisted of three levels of canola meal (0, 10 and 20% of the diet) and two levels of the enzyme (0 and 0.05% of diet). Among productive traits, only egg weight was decreased by dietary inclusion of canola meal at the level of 20% of diet (P<0.05). Except for the yolk color index, other egg quality parameters were not affected by different levels of canola meal and enzyme. In contrast, shell weight, shell thickness, eggshell calcium and egg-specific gravity were affected by the interactions between the canola meal and enzyme (P<0.05); so that the addition of enzyme to the diet containing 20% canola meal improved the mentioned parameters. After 10 wk of experiment, the inclusion of 20% canola meal in the diet of laying hens had no negative effects on toe bone parameters (toe ash, calcium and phosphorous), internal organs weight and serum T4 hormone level. In general, regarding no negative effects of canola meal on productive parameters and observing the positive effects of β-mannanase on eggshell quality at the high level of canola meal, it is suggested that canola meal can be included up to 20% with β-mannanase enzyme in the diet of laying hens.

The effects of four dietary fat sources were studied on growth performance, bacterial community and pH values in digesta of small intestine and cecum of broiler chickens. A total of 240 one d-old male broiler chicks were randomly assigned to four experimental diets with 6 replicates per each. The four experimental diets were diet without fat (control diet), diet containing 6% beef tallow (BT), diet containing 6% sunflower oil (SO) and diet containing 6% fish oil (FO) and fed to chicks from 0-42 days of age. Our results showed that FO diets significantly increased weight gain of chicks compared to control or BT diets from 1 to 21 d of age (P=0.022). At the same age, the best feed conversion ratio was observed in chicks fed SO and FO diets as compared with chicks fed BT treatment (P=0.038). Body weight gain, feed intake and feed conversion ratio of birds were not significantly affected by dietary fat sources at the entire experimental period (1-42 d). The birds fed SO and FO diets, had higher counts of Lactobacillus spp. in small intestine and cecum digesta and lower counts of coliforms in cecal digesta as compared to birds fed BT diet (P<0.05). A significant decrease was also observed in pH of cecal digesta of birds fed FO diet (P=0.039) compared to those fed BT diet at 42 d of age. In conclusion, the dietary fats rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids can improve growth performance, intestinal microflora and pH value in broiler chicks as compared with the dietary fats rich in saturated fatty acids.