Effects of feed supplementation with lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) essence on growth performance, carcass traits, blood constituents and caecal microbiota of broiler chickens

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) essence on growth performance, carcass characteristics, blood parameters and caecal microflora of broiler chickens. Six experimental diets were formulated to include different levels of lavender essence as follows: 0 (control), 100, 200, 400, 600 and 800 mg/kg, respectively. A total of 300 1-day-old male broiler chicks (Ross-308 strain) were randomly allocated to the treatment groups (5 replicates with 10 birds each). Diets were fed as mash form in both starter (1–21 days) and grower-finisher (22–42 days) periods. From findings, no differences among treatments were observed for body weight (BW) gain, feed intake (FI), and feed conversion ratio (FCR) considering the entire feeding period (1–42 days). Birds given 400 mg/kg lavender had lower (P < 0.05) carcass, breast, thigh, wings, neck and gizzard weights than birds from the other groups. With the exception of the serum glucose level, which was significantly (P < 0.05) decreased in lavender fed groups, there were no differences (P > 0.05) in serum levels of total protein, cholesterol, triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein (HDL), low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and uric acid among treatments. Broilers fed 600 mg/kg lavender essence had lower (P < 0.05) counts of caecal Lactobacillus spp. than others groups. E. coli and Coliforms counts were decreased (P < 0.05) in birds fed 600 mg/kg lavender. Therefore, based on the current study, it can be concluded that lavender essence can successfully be used as antibacterial agent in broiler diets without any detrimental effect on growth performance.