effect of synbiotic on performance and serum biochemical parameters of

rozbeh fallah1, sayed sadra ale saheb fosoul1*, hasan rezaei2 1-department of animal science, faculty of agriculture, lorestan university, khorramabad, iran 2- department of animal science, islamic azad university, ghaemshahr, iran     * corresponding author: [email protected]   received: 20 september 2013 accepted: 21 november 2013     abstract   the present experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of synbiotic on performance and serum biochemical parameters of ostrich chicks. forty eight day-old ostrich chicks were divided into 4 treatments with 4 replicates of 3 ostrich chicks in completely randomized design for 8 weeks. dietary treatments included basal diet (control) and basal diet with 0.5, 1 and 1.5 g/kg synbiotic. feed intake (fi), body weight (bw) and feed conversion ratio (fcr) were measured during the whole period of the experiment (0-8 wk of age).  additionally, blood samples were taken at the end of the experiment and analyzed for serum biochemical parameters. the results showed that 1 g/kg synbiotic inclusion in the diet significantly improved bw and fcr of the chicks compared to control group (p<0.05). furthermore, 1.5 g/kg synbiotic substantially increased blood glucose but decreased cholesterol (p<0.05). serum total protein and uric acid also decreased in the all dietary levels of synbiotic compared to control group (p<0.05). regarding these results, supplementation of 1 g/kg synbiotic appears to be effective on growth performance and serum biochemical parameters of ostrich chicks.