Evaluation of anesthetic and analgesic effect of ketamine in combination of tramadol, midazolam, hyoscine, and atropine in broiler chickens

In avian medicine and surgery, sedation and anesthesia is necessary not only fordoing many surgeries, but also to perform routine examination and diagnostic procedures, especially in wild birds. Injectable anesthesia supposed a simple and abrupt method without requiring any sophisticated equipment. Ketamine is a common injectable anesthetic that is used for this purpose. Because of some adverse effects of the ketamine, this drug is used in combination with some other drugs. In present study, combination of ketamine (35 mg/kg) with four drugs: Tramadol (0.2 mg/kg), Midazolam (0.5 mg/kg), Hyoscine (0.04 mg/kg), and Atropine (0.05 mg/kg) has been investigated in broiler chickens anesthesia. Forty numbers of 25 days old broiler chickens, weighing 488.58±60.02 (Mean±SD) were arbitrary separated into 4 equal groups, followed by different ketamine combinations that were injected in pectoral muscles of chickens in each groups. Average time of anesthesia induction, maintenance, recovery and analgesia were recorded in different groups. Result indicated that the induction time of anesthesia varied significantly among all 4 groups (P≤0.05). Maximum and minimum time of induction anesthesia was attributed to ketamine-midazolam and ketamine-atropine combinations respectively. Maximum time of maintenance anesthesia defined with ketamine-midazolam combination (57.53±6.47 min), which significantly was longer than other ketamine combinations (P≤0.05). Ketamine-hyoscine and ketamnie-midazolam groups had maximum time of recovery and analgesia respectively (P≤0.05). Analysis of recorded results and also quality of anesthesia revealed that application of ketaminemidazolam combination is great value comparing with other three combinations in performing injectable anesthesia in broiler chickens.