Effect of dietary Aloe vera gel powder supplementation on performance, lymphoid organ weights and immune response of Japanese quails

This experiment was conducted in order to evaluate the effects of dietary Aloe vera gel powder on performance, and humoral immunity of Japanese quails. Seven hundred one day old Japanese quails were allocated in a completely randomized design with 4 treatments replicated 5 times each with 35 birds per replicate. The experimental treatments were: 1) control group (basal diet, diet without aloe vera gel powder), 2) basal diet + 0.1 percent of aloe vera gel powder.3) basal diet + 0.2 percent of aloe vera gel powder, and 4) basal diet + 0.3 percent of aloe vera gel powder. The results did not show any significant differences between dietary treatments for feed intake, feed conversion ratio and weight gain (P>0.05). Statistically, a higher thymus weight (% of body weight) was found for group with 0.3% Aloe vera gel powder compared to the control group (P<0.05). The relative weights of spleen and bursa of fabricius and total immunoglobulin (Ig) and IgG antibody titers against SRBC were increased by increasing the levels of Aloe vera gel powder in the diets but these differences were not significant (P>0.05). The highest IgM antibody against Sheep Red Blood Cell (SRBC) was obtained by 0.3% Aloe vera gel powder group (P<0.05). In spite of non-effective impact of Aloe vera gel powder on the performance of the birds, the improved response of immune system found with this study could be beneficial for the quails in some stress conditions.