Effect of Dietary Supplementation of Arginine on Performance of Commercial Broiler Chicken

Abstract

The experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of dietary arginine supplementation on the performance of commercial broiler chickens. A total of 144 straight run day old commercial broiler chicks were randomly allotted to six treatment groups with four replicates per treatment. Each replicate was having six chicks, resulting in 24 chicks per treatment group. Six experimental diets (T1, T2, T3, T4, T5 and T6) were formulated and fed as starter (0-10 days), grower (11-21 days) and finisher (22-42 days) diets. The basal diet formulated according to BIS (2024) specifications was considered as the control (T1) without arginine supplementation, while diets T2, T3, T4, T5 and T6 were prepared by supplementing arginine at 0.1%, 0.2%, 0.3%, 0.4%, and 0.5%, respectively. The parameters studied included body weight, body weight gain, feed consumption, feed conversion ratio (FCR), livability, and return over feed cost. During the early growth phase, higher levels of arginine supplementation (0.4% and 0.5%) significantly (p<0.05) increased body weight and body weight gain and improved FCR, while at 42 days of age, an apparent improvement in body weight, body weight gain and FCR was observed in the arginine supplemented groups. Economically, diets containing 0.4% and 0.5% arginine were more beneficial compared to the control diet