Replacement Feasibility of a Commercial Antioxidant (BHT) with Yaghooti Grape (V. venifera) in Broilers

The current experiment was conducted in order to compare the effects of Yaghooti Grape (V. venifera) along with commercial antioxidant of Butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) on performance, biochemical parameters and carcass characteristics of broilers. 150 day-old Ross 308 male chicks were randomly distributed in to 5 experimental treatments with 3 replicates and 10 chicks per replicate in completely randomized design manner for 42 days. Experimental groups were: Control (basal diet with no additive); Basal diet with 150 ppm Yaghooti grape Methanolic extraction; basal diet with 3% Yaghooti grape pulp; basal diet with 3% Yaghooti grape juice and basal diet with 200 ppm BHT. Results showed that different dietary treatments had no significant impact on performance including body weight, feed consumption and feed conversion ratio, liver enzymes and intestinal components in all studied treatments, compared to control group. Application of 3% of grape pulp in broiler diet led to significant reduction in cholesterol, triglyceride, LDL and increase in blood serum HDL. For carcass characteristics, grape pulp has significantly increased relative carcass and breast weights and reduction in gizzard and liver weights in broilers, compared with control group. Therefore, it can be concluded that treatment with Yaghooti grape pulp can be a suitable replacer for BHT commercial antioxidant in terms of biochemical parameters and carcass characteristic’s improvement in commercial broilers.