Vol. 12, Special Issue 8 (2023)

Author(s):
Bhavya Pal, Siddhartha Mishra, Keshram Meena and Dashrath Singh Chundawat

Abstract:
The study was undertaken to evaluate the effect of dietary supplementation of ashwagandha (Withania somnifera) on growth performance of broiler chicks. One hundred sixty straight run day-old coloured broiler chicks were used in a completely randomized design in 4 treatments with 4 replicates, each consisting of 10 chicks. The basal diet (control) comprising maize, soya deoiled cake deoiled rice bran was supplemented with ashwagandha root powder at 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5% of the diet in three dietary treatment groups. The birds were maintained under deep litter under standard management practices and the effect of supplementation was studied on body weight, body weight gain, feed intake and feed conversion ratio in broiler chicks. The body weight, weekly body weight gain or overall body weight gain was significantly (p<0.01) higher in group fed ashwagandha powder at 0.5% as compared to other treatments. The overall body weight gain was also significantly higher (p<0.01) with supplementation of ashwagandha powder at 0.5% level. The dietary group with ashwagandha powder at 0.5% had lowest feed conversion ratio, the feed efficiency was higher in all the groups supplemented with ashwagandha as compared to control groups. It may be concluded from the present study that supplementation of ashwagandha powder at 0.5% is beneficial in terms of body weight gain, and feed conversion efficiency in broiler chicks.