Phytobiotics Habbatus Sauda and Garlic Meal: Are Still Efficacious during the Spread of Marek’s Disease Outbreak

Abstract

When kept intensively in a closed-house poultry shed, additions of habbatus sauda (Nigella sativa; HSM) or garlic bulb meal (Allium sativum; GBM) in the diets were claimed to be ef cacious used as growth promoter for broiler chickens. This study critically evaluated the effectiveness of both phytobiotics during the spread of Marek’s disease outbreak. A hundred male New Lohmann day old broiler chicks were divided into 5 dietary treatments. One-way ANOVA treatment structure in a Complete Randomized Design was used in this experiment. The treatment diets were: basal diets that meet dietary requirements of the breeder, without phytobiotics supplementation (control; P1); basal diets + 1.0% HSM (P2); basal diets + 1.0% GBM (P3); basal diets + 1.0% HSM + 1.0% GBM (P4); and basal diets + 0.5% HSM + 0.5% GBM (P5). Each treatment was replicated 5 times, with 4 birds in each replicate pen. Response parameters that evaluated in this study were growth performance (average daily gain, nal weight, feed intake, and feed conversion ratio) and protein-energy ef ciency (protein and energy intake, protein and energy ef ciency ratio), based on 5 weeks rearing period. Results showed that, when the birds were raised in tropical opened-system poultry shed during the spread of Marek’s disease, dietary addition of 1.0% habbatus sauda and garlic bulb meal did not give any signi cant positive effects on all response variables that observed on growth performance and protein-energy ef ciency parameters. It might be concluded that phytobiotics supplementation is only ef cacious for improving productivity of broiler chickens when the birds are reared in closed-house poultry shed that free from disease outbreak.