Effect of Azolla feeding on the growth, feed conversion ratio, blood biochemical attributes and immune competence traits of growing turkeys

Abstract

Background and AimIn the recent past,few studies have been carried out in chicken to assess the effect of Azolla meal and raw Azolla feeding on the performance of chicken. If turkeys effectively use unconventional feedstuffs like Azolla without reducing the performance, it will increase the profitability of turkey business. Hence, a study was carried out to evaluate the effect of dried Azolla pinnata vis-a-vis raw Azolla as choice feeding on the growth, feed conversion ratio (FCR), blood biochemical attributes, and immune competence traits of growing turkeys under intensive system.Materials and MethodsA total of 72, 8-week-old grower turkey poults of black variety were randomly distributed into three dietary treatments having three replicates each with eight birds. The birds of the control group (T1) were fed a basal diet (CP - 19.71% and ME - 2789.79 Kcal/kg), while the other group (T2) and choice-feeding group (T3) were fed 5% of basal diet replaced by dry Azolla powder on DM basis and ad libitumAzolla along with basal diet, respectively.ResultsThere was no significant difference among the different groups in the average weekly weight gain during the entire experiment. FCR was significantly better (p<0.05) in the choice-feeding group compared to the other two experimental groups during 8-16 weeks of age. There was no significant difference among the treatment groups in any of the blood biochemical indices except plasma uric acid, which was significantly decreased (p<0.01) in T2 compared to T1 at 16 weeks of age. HA and IgM response to 1% sheep red blood cells (log2 titer) were numerically better in T2 and T3 compared to the T1.ConclusionThus, it may be inferred that choice feeding with Azolla, and basal diet may improve FCR without any adverse effect on blood biochemical attributes and immune competence traits.

Inclusion of Azolla pinnata as an unconventional feed of Zaraibi dairy goats, and effects on milk production and offspring performance

“…The nutrient composition of azolla varies according to environmental conditions during cultivation ( 5 ). Furthermore, the ash percentages of SDAM, OM, and NFE were associated as reported by Shukla et al ( 31 ), who also found that an increased azolla rations, decreased OM content but increased CF this may be due to the higher total ash and CF content of azolla. In contrast, the percentage of CF of SDAM observed disagree with observations by Ara et al ( 32 ).…”

Azolla incorporation and dual cropping influences CH4 and N2O emissions from flooded paddy ecosystems

“…Azolla is still cultivated in organically managed paddy fields, especially in rice-fish-Azolla or rice-duck-Azolla multi-ecoproduction systems in Asia (Cagauan, Branckaert, and van Hove 2000;Lu and Xia 2006;Cheng et al 2015). Additionally, Azolla has recently gained considerable importance for its multifaceted uses (Yadav et al 2014;Kollah, Patra, and Mohanty 2016;Shukla et al 2018;Chakraborty et al 2019). Use of Azolla as green manure can either be through its incorporation into paddy soil at the beginning of land preparation before rice transplanting or grown as a dual crop along with rice plants (Xu et al 2017).…”

Effect of dietary supplementation of seaweed (Ulva lactuca) and Azolla on growth performance, haematological and serum biochemical parameters of Aseel chicken

“…Alalade and Iyayi [27] performed chemical analytical studies on the nutritional composition of Azolla meal and reported a presence of 21.4% crude protein, 12.7% crude fibre, 2.7% ether extract, 16.2% ash and 47.0% carbohydrate on DM basis with a gross energy value of 2039 kcal/kg. There were various reports on the usage of Azolla as feed supplement in livestock and poultry and its effect on body weight gain performance, immune condition, haematological and biochemical parameters [28][29][30][31][32]. This present paper deals the effect of feeding U. lactuca and Azolla as individual supplement and in combination on different performance parameters of Aseel chicken.…”