Effects of Different Oil Sources on Performance and Fatty Acid Profile of Breast and Thigh Muscles in Broilers

This experiment was conducted to determine the effect of different vegetable oil types on broiler performance, carcass characteristics and fatty acid profile of breast and thigh meat. For it, a total number of 300 day-old cobb-500 broiler chickens were housed in floor pens for 42 days in a completely randomized design, consisted of 5 treatments (soy, flaxseed, canola, corn and sunflower), with 5 replicates and 12 chicks in each. At 43 days of age, after 4 hour of fasting, two birds from each replicate (a male and a female) were slaughtered by cervical dislocation and after carcass characteristic determination, sampling from male breast and thigh was done. Different vegetable oil sources had no significant effect on weight gain (1-42 day period), feed conversion ratio (1-42 day period) and carcass characteristics. Flaxseed oil increased UFA, PUFA, n-3 fatty acids, UFA:SFA ratio, PUFA:SFA ratio and decreased n-6:n-3 ratio in breast and thigh muscles (P<0.05). The highest content of n-6 fatty acids was observed in the thigh of the chickens fed corn and flaxseed oils and the lowest was seen in broilers received canola oil (P<0.05). The results showed that dietary oil source had no significant effect on feed conversion ratio but inclusion of flaxseed oil enhanced n-3 fatty acid content of broiler breast and thigh meat.