Dietary Olive Leaf and Antioxidative Status in Chickens

Olive leave extract was effective in minimizing the oxidative stress which was induced with the advance of age, specially for plasma cholesterol, triglyceride, thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS), superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione s-transferase (GST). This experiment was conducted to study the effect of dietary olive leave powder (OLP) on performance, immunological and biochemical parameters of Mandarah chicks.

Two hundred and forty Mandarah unsexed 4-wk old were divided into four groups as 60 chicks each and replicated four times. The experiment commenced four weeks. Birds for the first group was fed the basal diet (19.56% CP, 2875 Kcal ME/Kg) and served as control. Chicks for the rest groups were fed the basal diets and supplemented with 0.5%, 1.0% and 2.0% OLP and termed as T1, T2 and T3, respectively.

The results showed that OLP treatments caused significant improvement of body weight and feed conversion. Also increase in some blood constituents such as plasma total protein and its fractions, aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) enzymes had been detected. Moreover dietary OLP treatment increased white blood cells account (WBC's), heamaaglutination inhibition (HI) titer, glutathione s-transferase (GST) activity and superoxide dismutase (SOD). Highest values of the previous parameters were observed in birds received 2.0% OLP. Dietary supplementations of OLP significantly decreased plasma triglycerides, cholesterol, and thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS). Feeding diets containing OLP significantly decreased heterophiles to lymphocytes (H:L) and albumin to globulin (ALB:GLB) ratios. Lowest values of the mentioned traits were observed in chicks received 2.0% OLP.

This study showed that there are no adverse effects of inclusion of olive leave powder in Mandarah chicks diet. However dietary OLP with concentration of 2% improved performance of Mandarah chicks, and their oxidative status and immunity response. Therefore the use of OLP seems to have beneficial effect on chick performance and oxidative status.

Dietary olive leave supplementation with 2.0% level could be recommended for improving chicks performance and most of the immunological and biochemical traits.

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Keywords. Olive leave, performance, immunity, chicks.