Pin Chanjula, Damrus Chatreewong, and Winai Waree

pp. 197 - 206

Abstract

An eight-week experiment was conducted to study using Andrographis paniculata (AP) on the growth performance of Betong chickens (0-8 weeks of age). Three hundred and fifteen head of 1 day old (mixed sex)
betong chicks were randomly allotted to 7 dietary treatments, in a completely randomized design experiment. There were three replications in each treatment with 15 chicks per pen. The dietary treatments were 1) basal diet (control), 2) basal diet + 0.1% AP, 3) basal diet + 0.2% AP, 4) basal diet + 0.3% AP, 5) basal diet + 0.5% AP, 6) basal diet + 0.6% AP and 7) basal diet + antibiotic 0.2%, respectively. The results showed no significant (P>0.05) difference among treatments in terms of weight gain, feed intake, feed conversion, mortality rate
and feed cost when AP was included up to 0.1-0.3 % of the diet compared with basal diet and basal diet + antibiotic. However, at levels higher than 0.5% AP, it tended to lower growth performance and feed intake thus causing inferior feed conversion ratio. Feed cost was also dramatically increased with the increasing
levels of AP in the diet. No significant difference in mortality rate was found among groups. The average mortality was 1.37%.