Abstract
The aim of the present study was to investigate the influence of a commercial essential oil blend (EO), CRINA
®
Poultry (CRP), as an alternative to in-feed antibiotic, enramycine
®
, on growth parameters of broilers during pre and post-challenge with Clostridium perfringens (C. perfringens). The birds received treatments from 0 to 30 days as follows: T1, positive control (+CONT): without medication or bacterial challenge; T2, negative control (-CONT): without medication but with C. perfringens challenge; T3, antibiotic with addition of enramycin with C. perfringens challenge (ENRA); and T4, with addition of CRINA
®
Poultry to feed with C. perfringens challenge (CRP). Overall, feed intake (FI), body weight gain (BWG) and feed conversion ratio (FCR) was not significantly different among the four treatments (P>0.05). On the other hand, EO supplementation caused some changes in the gut morphology, birds which had received CRP had longer ileal villi as compared to +CONT or ENRA groups (P<0.05). The performance of the birds which had consumed CRP was similar to all other treatments. On the other hand, the results obtained from this trail clearly showed that CRP supplementation failed to control the proliferation of C. perfringens in the intestine. The results from this study indicated that CRP under the condition of this experiment had no influence on broilers performance but it had a positive effect on gut morphology.