Metabolism and Nutrition, Feed Additives I

The current study evaluated the effect of a commercial wheat-maizesoybean meal based diet supplemented with an organic acid product containing a specific combination of formic and propionic acids (pHorce) on performance parameters in broiler chickens. One day-old broiler chickens (Ross 308) were randomly allotted to 2 treatments with 10 replicate cages/treatment and 2 birds/cage from d 1 to 21. From d 21 to 35, birds were reduced to one per cage. The dietary treatments were (1) a positive control basal diet containing wheat, corn, and soybean meal formulated to meet or exceed nutrient requirements of Ross 308 broilers; PCD, and (2) PCD + supplemented with pHorce (1.0, 0.7 and 0.5 kg/MT of feed in starter, grower and finisher feed, respectively; OAD. The diets were fed in 3 phases from d 1 to 7, d 8 to 21, and d 22 to 35 (starter, grower, finisher, respectively). Body weight (BW), feed intake (FI), average daily weight gain (ADG) and feed efficiency (feed conversion ratio, FCR) were determined. Data were analyzed as completely randomized design by GLM of SPSS using BW d 0 as covariate. Although overall ADG and FI were not affected (P > 0 .05) by dietary treatment, final BW was numerically higher (P = 0 .14) and FCR improved in the finisher phase (d 22–35; P < 0 .001) and overall trial period (d 0–35; P = 0.004) for OAD fed birds. Overall feed efficiency improved (P < 0.05) by 6.8% in broilers fed OAD compared with PCD. In conclusion, the current study showed that addition of a commercial organic acid containing a blend of formic and propionic acid (pHorce), to a commercial diet improved feed utilization and performance in broiler chickens from d 0 to 35 .