Growth performance, carcass yield and bacteria load of broiler chickens on oral administration of Nigella sativa oil

Abstract

One hundred and forty-four, one day – old broiler (arbor acre strain) chicks were used in a 49-day trial to assess the influence of oral administration of black seed oil on growth performance, carcass traits and bacteria load in broiler chickens. The birds were divided into four groups (36 per group) and randomly assigned to treatments with varying levels of black seed oil (1.5 ml/L, 3.0 ml/L and 4.5 ml/L of water) and control (antibiotics). Data obtained were subjected to one-way Analysis of variance at α0.05 . Oral administration of varying levels of Nigella sativa oil did not have any significant (P>0.05) effect on the growth performance indices (final weight includes 1899.49, 1940.28, 1888.51 and 1795.83g across the groups) and carcass traits of broiler chickens. Black seed oil had no significant (p>0.05) effect on the faecal bacteria count, only numerically reduced total blood coliform count with increasing 6 dosage of Nigella sativa oil (0.50, 0.40, 0.33 and 0.40 × 10 cfu/ml) in water while caecal coliform reduced (p <0.05) markedly at 4.5ml/L dosage (2.03 vs 2.53, 2.37, 2.43). It was concluded that a minimum dosage of 4.5ml/L of black seed oil be adopted for a significant reduction in bacterial load in chickens.