Use of aloe vera as natural growth promoter on production performance of sonali chicken

This study was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of dietary supplementation of Aloe vera gel on production performance, dressing yield and hematological parameters of sonali chicken. Methods: A total number of 180 day old chicks were randomly assigned into five treatment groups namely (T0, T1, T2, T3 and T4) having three replication in each treatment group. Chicks were brooded upto 7 days then randomly separated into pen upto 8 weeks. Each treatment group contains 36 birds whereas each replication contain 12 birds. Experimental birds in T2, T3 and T4 were provided aloe vera gel @ 7.5,15, and 22.5 gm per litre drinking water while T0 was provided only plain water and T1 provided 1ml amino plus per litre water those were maintained as control group. Results: The study indicated that final live weight gain and feed efficiency of birds was significantly (p<0.05) higher that received @22.5gm/L aloe vera gel compared to control T0 while insignificant in commercial growth promoter group. This result also indicated that body weight gain, feed intake and feed efficiency were increased along with increasing dose of aloe vera gel. In meat yield parameters there were no significant difference among the treatment group except breast meat weight. Blood parameters (RBC, PCV, Hb and Total WBC) showed significant (p<0.05) difference among the treatment groups except the total white blood cells (WBC) count. Aloe vera treated group T4 showed the lowest feed cost while untreated group showed the highest price.