Physiology, Endocrinology, and Reproduction Posters

Pulmonary hypertension syndrome (ascite) is a metabolic malformation cause important economic losses to broilers industry. Main mechanism of ascite outbreak is hypertension of pulmonary blood which occurs after incompetency of heart right ventricle. Promotion of damages leads to right ventricle enlargement. High levels of salt can lead to early ascite syndrome in broiler chickens. High levels of dietary Sodium (Na) can induct pulmonary hypertension. In this study 204 d-old male chicks (Arian hybrid) were allocated to 4 treatments with 3 replicates. Salt were supplemented to drinking water as follows: 0% (control), 0.2%, 0.4% and 0.6%. Treatments applying were started at d 7 and last until mortality reached to 3%. Factors evaluated were average body weight and mortality (weekly), and feed conversion ratio (FCR) and hematocrite percent (in end of experiment). No differences were observed between groups for average body weight in any weeks. There were differences among treatments in FCR, highest and lowest FCR were found for 0.6% and control treatments. Weekly mortality showed that highest mortality outbreak for 0.6% treatment was occurred in wk 4 (7 birds). Peak of mortality for 0.2% and 0.4% treatments belongs to 6th week that were 6 and 5 birds, respectively. Highest mortality of control group was occurred in wk 7 (8 birds). No differences were found for hemaocrit percent between treatments. According to these results, it can be recognize that this study could shift mortality peak from 7th week to earlier weeks. Because of damages due to high levels of salt supplementation, FCR were increased but were not significantly. Hematocrit percent were not changed which means that salt had no negative effects on circulatory system. In previous studies harmful effects of salt on heart and blood were demonstrated, while in this study because of limited use of salt, no negative effects were observed.