The Efficacy of Dietary Savory Essential Oil on Reducing the Toxicity of Aflatoxin B1 in Broiler Chicks

The aim of this study was to evaluate the capability of savory essential oil in counteracting the deleterious effects of aflatoxin B-1 (AFB(1)) on growth performance, serum biochemistry, and humoral immune responses in broiler chickens fed 42 days of age. At a 22 factorial arrangement in completely randomized design, 300 day-old broiler chicks were assigned to four treatments with five replicates of 15 birds. Chickens were fed the basal diet up to day 7 of age and then fed the experimental diets. The dietary treatments involved of 0 and 0.5 mg of AFB1/kg with or without 500 mg of savory/kg dry matter. The addition of aflatoxin to diet decreased (P<0.05) the weight gain and feed intake and resulted in a poor feed conversion ratio. Birds in the AFB(1) group had lower level of albumin, but higher levels of creatinine and liver enzymes in the serum as compared with the control group. The addition of savory to the contaminated diet diminished (P<0.05) the inhibitory effects of dietary AFB(1) on the growth performance and the level of liver enzymes in serum. The addition of aflatoxin to diet caused a decrease and savory supplementation caused an increase in antibody titer against the Newcastle virus, and interaction among the factors was differ (P<0.05). The main effects and interaction on antibody titer against influenza virus were not differ (P>0.05). The addition of savory reduced the adverse effects of aflatoxin on growth performance and provided slight positive effect on serum biochemistry and humoral immune responses in broilers exposed aflatoxin.