Back A. C. L. Safaloah and G. A. Smith
Department of Animal and Wildlife Science, University of Pretoria, Pretoria 002, South Africa
Full Paper (PDF File: 95KB)
Abstract
An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of using Effective Micro-organisms (EM) as an alternative to antibiotics (AB) on growth performance, feed utilisation and serum cholesterol of broilers. Dietary treatments consisted of supplementation with neither AB nor EM, AB only, EM only or AB plus EM. The EM was supplemented at either 15 g/kg or 30 g/kg while the AB (Zinc Bacitracin) was added at 500 mg/kg. At six weeks of age, birds fed diets with neither the EM nor AB had significantly (P<.05) lower weight gains (2066 g) than the rest of the treatments. Birds fed the diet containing AB and EM at 30 g/kg had significantly (P<.05) higher body weight gain (2096g) than the rest of the treatments. The improvements in BWG were associated with slight enhancement of feed efficiency while the EM effects were more pronounced at the higher dosage (30 g/kg). The poorest feed: gain ratio (1.82) was observed in birds fed diets containing neither EM nor AB. Apart from improving dressing percentage, EM supplementation also resulted in birds with low serum cholesterol levels. This study has shown that EM has growth promoting and hypocholesteremic effects and offers a potential alternative to antibiotics in broiler diets.