The effect of three different sources of copper on the ileal digestibility of nutrients, biochemical indices of blood, liver and bone minerals in Ross 308 broiler chickens

Copper is one of the most important trace elements in broiler diets so this experiment was performed to compare the effect of three different sources of copper on ileal digestibility of nutrients, biochemical indices of blood, liver and bone on 600 one-day-old broilers of Ross 308 strain up to 42 days of age in a completely randomized design with 10 treatments and 5 replications and 12 chicks for each replication. Environmental conditions were the same for all groups. Experimental treatments include 1- control treatment at the rate of zero mg/kg of copper supplement; Treatments 2, 3 and 4 contain copper Nano-oxide at 10, 20 and 30 mg/kg, respectively, treatments 5, 6 and 7 contain copper oxide at 10, 20 and 30 mg/kg and treatments 8, 9 and 10 contain copper sulfate at 10, 20 and 30 mg/kg. At the end of the experiment, the data were compared with the GLM procedure of SAS software (SAS, 2004) and Duncan's multiple range tests at a significance level of 5% were used. The results showed that the digestibility of dry matter, crude protein, ether extract and crude ash of the experimental diets were not significantly affected by the treatments and the type and source of copper in the diets. It was shown that the amount of copper in the tibia of experimental chickens was significantly affected by the treatments (P<0.001). So that the highest amount of copper in the tibia was observed in the sulfate 30 treatment, which was significantly different from other treatments (P<0.05). In general, it can be concluded that the amount of copper in the diet can affect the accumulation of copper in the tibia and it seems that the use of cheap copper sources such as copper sulfate compared to new and expensive copper sources such as copper nanoparticles have no different on the performance of the birds.