the effect of olive leaves on blood pressure, growth performance and biochemical blood parameters in broiler chickens

this study was carried out to indicate the effects of olive leaves on arterial blood pressure, blood lipids and growth performance in broiler chickens. experiment was conducted with 5 treatments and 4 replicates with 25 birds per each replicate in a completely randomized design with over all 500 male arian strain 1-day old broilers. the period of study was 42 d. treatments were control, drug of anti-hypertension propranolol (4 mg/kg bw) and 0.5, 1 and 1.5% olive leaf in diets. the growth performance, blood pressure, cholesterol, triglyceride, ldl-cholesterol, hdlcholesterol, glucose and total protein in serum were measured. blood pressure was determined on brachial artery of all conscious birds at the end of 42 d with instruments of vascular flow detector sonicaid bv102r and baby cuff. the results of this experiment indicated that, there were significant effect of olive leaf on blood pressure, serum cholesterol, triglyceride, ldl-cholesterol and mortality (p<0.05), but no significant effect on serum hdlcholesterol, glucose and total protein in broiler chickens. according to results of this experiment, in order to reduce blood pressure, serum lipids, mortality and improvement of production efficiency, use of olive leaf up to 1.5% in broilers diet could be recommended.