effect of adding chemical amendment to litter materials (sawdust and wheat straw) on litter quality, growth performance and incidence of carcass lesions in broiler

the purpose of this research was to evaluate the effects of litter chemical amendments on litter quality, broiler performance and carcass lesions (breast blisters, foot pad lesions and hock burns). in a 2×4 factorial experiment with 576 commercial broiler chicks (arian), the effect of two types of litter materials and three amendments were investigated using a completely randomized design with three replications and 24 day-old chicks in each pen. litter material treatments were: 1) sawdust and 2) wheat straw. litter amendment treatments were: 1) control (with no litter amendment), 2) alum + caco3, 3) natural zeolite + citric acid, 4) whole additives from 2 and 3 treatments. litter materials and amendments and interaction between those did not have any effect on weight gain, feed consumption, feed conversion, and mortality percentage in chicks and ph value, nitrogen retention (%), total plate counts and lactobacillus populations (cfu/g) in litter. moisture percentage significantly affected by litter types (p>0.05). incidence of breast blisters or footpad lesions were not significantly affected by litter materials and amendments. incidence of hock burns significantly affected by litter chemical amendments (p>0.05), in a way that use of sawdust litter and chemical amendments resulted in decrease of incidence and severity of hock burn in broiler.