Effect of Dietary Acidifier on Growth, Mortality, Post-Slaughter Parameters and Meat Composition of Broiler Chickens / Wpływ zakwaszacza diety na masę ciała, śmiertelność, wydajność rzeźną i skład mięsa kurcząt rzeźnych

Abstract

An experiment with 608 broiler chickens was conducted to investigate the effect of dietary acidifier level on body weight, feed consumption and conversion, mortality, dressing percentage, postmortem carcass traits, tissue composition of breast and leg muscles, and plasma chemical parameters. Feeding the acidifier to chickens at 3, 6 and 9 g/kg of the diet reduced the pH of starter and grower diets from 6.90 to 5.89, and from 6.28 to 5.73, respectively. Compared to the control group, dietary acidification significantly increased body weight of chickens by 6.2, 8.2 and 8.2% at 21 days of age, and by 2.7, 3.6 and 3.7% at 42 days of age, respectively (P