The Effect of Charcoal Addition to Diets for Broilers on Performance and Carcass Parameters

The experimental materials comprised 800 Cobb 500 broiler chickens. One-day-old chickens of both sexes were randomly allocated to two feeding groups, each with four replicates of 100 birds. The chickens were reared for six weeks on deep litter and were fed standard pelleted diets in a three-stage system (starter, grower and finisher). Control group (I) birds received basal diets and experimental group (II) birds received identical diets supplemented with charcoal in the amount of 0.3%. Charcoal was added to diets at the feed mill. Dietary supplementation with charcoal was found to have a beneficial effect on the performance results of broilers. At the completion of a six-week rearing period, the body weights of chickens in the experimental group (fed charcoal-supplemented diets) increased significantly by 3.5% and their feed conversion ratio improved by 2.0%, compared with the control group.