Effects of Thymol and Carvacrol on Productive Performance, Antioxidant Enzyme Activity and Certain Blood Metabolites in Heat Stressed Broilers

The present study was carried out to evaluate the effects of thymol and carvacrol supplementation on performance, immune response, antioxidant enzyme activity and blood parameters of heat stressed broilers. Broilers were fed with commercial diet till 25 d of age, then they were allocated to a completely randomized design with a 3 × 2 factorial arrangement with 6 treatments including 3 levels of carvacrol (0, 300 and 500 mg/kg of diet) and 2 levels of thymol (0 and 250 mg/kg of diet) in 4 replicates of 9 birds each. To induce heat stress, diurnal cyclic temperature at 35 ˚C for 8 h from 09:00 h to 17:00 h, were used from 26 day of age until the end of the experiment. Dietary carvacrol did not affect performance parameters of broilers but feeding 250 mg/kg thymol increased body weight gainand decreased feed conversion ratio by 6 and 4%, respectively (P