Supplemental Vitamins and Varying Administration Period on Broilers

A total of 330 day old broiler chicks were used to investigate the influence of vitamins and administration periods on performance and antibody titres of broiler chickens vaccinated against Newcastle disease (ND) for 8 weeks. At day old 30 chicks were used to evaluate maternally derived antibody titre against ND. At day 2 of age, remaining 300 chicks were distributed to 10 treatment groups, replicated thrice (ten birds per replicate). The ten treatments consist of five vitamins (control, vitamins A, C, E and the combined vitamins) and two periods of administration (3 days pre- and post-ND vaccination) in a factorial arrangement. ND vaccines were administered (Hitchner B1 and Lasota) on 5th and 24th day of age. Data obtained were subjected to One-way ANOVA. A better FCR of 2.89 was obtained in birds fed diet containing combined vitamins A+C+E. Birds fed vitamin A supplemented diet three days pre-Hitchner B1 had significantly higher serum antibody titre (75.20) against ND while a significantly higher serum antibody titre of 741.33 was recorded in birds fed diet supplemented with vitamin E three days post-Lasota.