Silymarin seed extract supplementation enhances the growth performance, meat quality, and nutrients digestibility, and reduces gas emission in broilers

• Published in: Animal bioscience 2022, 35(8), , pp.1215-1222
• Main Authors: Shanmugam, Sureshkumar, Park, Jae Hong, Cho, Sungbo, Kim, In Ho
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bioflavonoids; blood profile; broiler; Broilers (Poultry); Flavones; Flavonoids; Food and nutrition; growth performance; Health aspects; meat quality; Physiological aspects; silymarin; 축산학
• ISSN: 2765-0189; 2765-0235; 2765-0235
• DOI: 10.5713/ab.21.0539

Objective: A feeding trial was carried out to determine the effect of dietary inclusion of silymarin seed extract on growth performance, nutrient digestibility, excreta microbiota, excreta gas emission, blood profiles, and meat quality in broilers.Methods: A total of 1,088 one-day-old Ross 308 broiler chicks (mixed-sex) with an initial body weight of 42.34±0.82 g, were randomly allocated into 1 of 4 dietary treatments with 17 replicates of 16 chicks per cage and fed a basal diet supplemented with 0%, 0.02%, 0.04%, and 0.06% of silymarin.Results: The inclusion of silymarin supplementation linearly increased the body weight of broilers during days 7 to 21 and 1 to 35 days. On day 35, broilers fed a diet containing graded levels of silymarin supplementation linearly increased the nutrient digestibility of dry matter, gross energy, and nitrogen and cecal Lactobacillus counts (p = 0.038). While silymarin supplement linearly reduced the methyl mercaptans (p = 0.039) and acetic acid (p = 0.007) emission in broilers. No significant effects were observed on the blood profile. Relative weights of organs such as breast muscle, bursa of fabricius were increased (linear effect, p0.05) in drip loss from meat samples during days 1, 3, 5, and 7 by the addition of graded level of silymarin to the diet.Conclusion: An increasing level of silymarin supplementation to the diet of broiler would be beneficial to enhance growth performance, nutrient digestibility, excreta microflora, blood profile, and meat quality traits.