Effect of Vitamin E on Body Temperature and Carcass Weight of Broiler Chickens Under Severe Heat Stress

Abstract

One method to mitigate the negative effects of heat stress is the use of specific nutritional supplements, such as Vitamin E, which acts as an antioxidant and plays a role in regulating the immune system. These supplements can enhance animal production and growth under high-temperature conditions, partially mitigating the damage caused by environmental factors. However, to date, no research has been conducted in our country to investigate the effect of Vitamin E on reducing the negative impacts of high temperatures in broiler chickens. Therefore, this study was conducted to examine the effects of different doses of Vitamin E on broiler chicks exposed to high environmental temperatures. The experiment was carried out at a private farm near the research farm of the Faculty of Agriculture, Baghlan University, at the end of the spring of 2020 (1399 in the local calendar). For this purpose, 80 newly hatched chicks were kept under normal environmental conditions until the fifteenth day. Afterwards, these chicks were completely randomly divided into two groups: normal temperature (25°C) and high temperature (40°C). Each group received four different doses of Vitamin E: 0, 100, 200, and 300 milligrams per kilogram of dry feed. The experimental design used for this research was a Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with 10 replications (n=10). In this study, traits such as the increase in body temperature of the chicks, weight gain, and carcass yield were investigated. The collected data were first entered into MS Excel 2016, where outliers (P < 0.05) were removed, and then transferred to StatView Version 5.0 software. The data were analyzed using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The means were compared based on the significant interaction effects of treatments using the Tukey-Kramer Test, considering a 5% error level.