1Faculty of Agriculture, University of Anbar
2Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Fallujah
The present study included two experiments. The first experiment was carried out to investigate the effect of adding different levels of anise, fenugreek and their mixture powder, to the diet and the second experiment was conducted to determine the effect of adding different levels of sage powder to the diet on the preparation of total bacteria count and coliform bacteria in the intestines of the broilers. In the two experiments, 390 one-day-old Ross 308 hybrid broilers were used with an average weight of 41g. At the first experiment, 270 one-day-old broiler chicks were randomly divided into to 9 dietary treatments with 3 replicates per treatment and 10 chicks per replicate (30 chicks per treatment). The dietary treatments involved T1: Control treatment was basal diet (without supplementation), T2, T3, T4, T5, T6, T7, T8 and T9 were basal diet with 0.5% of anise, 1% of anise, 0.5% of fenugreek, 1% of fenugreek, 0.5: 0.5% anise: fenugreek, 1.0: 0.5% anise: fenugreek, 0.5: 1.0% anise: fenugreek and 1.0: 1.0% anise: fenugreek powders respectively. As for the second experiment, 120 one-day-old broiler chicks were randomly divided into four treatment with three replicates (each replicate 10 chicks). The dietary treatments included T1: control treatment (basal diet), T2, T3, T4 were basal diet supplemented with 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5% of sage powder respectively. The results showed a significant decrease (P<0.05) in the total bacterial count and coliform bacteria in the intestines of the broiler chickens for all addition treatments and both experiments compared to control treatment. The results also showed a significant (P<0.05) decrease in the total aerobic bacteria and coliform bacteria count in broiler intestine at high levels of herbs and their mixture added to the diet compared with control treatment. Significantly, the interaction treatments between anise and fenugreek, reduced the number of bacteria compared to T1, T2, T3, T4 and T5. It can be concluded that the addition of anise, fenugreek and sage to the broiler diets led to a significant reduction in the numbers of total bacteria and colon bacteria in the intestines which improves health situation that reflected positively on productive performance of broilers.
Anise, Fenugreek, Total Bacterial Count, Colonic Bacteria, Broilers
