Efficacy of a phytonutrient supplement at different dietary protein contents on growth performance, gut morphology, digestive enzymes activities and stress indicators of broilers subjected to circular heat stress

Context Dietary manipulations such as reductions in protein or the addition of bioactive feed additives might alleviate the adverse effects of high ambient temperature in poultry. Aims The effects of dietary crude protein (CP) and phytonutrient mixture (PM) on growth performance and physiological responses were evaluated in broilers under circular heat stress (HS). Methods In total, 420 1-day-old broiler chickens were randomly distributed to seven treatments in a factorial arrangement (3 × 2), with three levels of CP (normal, medium (95% of the normal CP content) and low (90% of the normal CP content)) and with or without the addition of PM (mixture of 5 mg/kg carvacrol, 3 mg/kg cinnamaldehyde, and 2 mg/kg capsicum oleoresin). The thermoneutral control (TNC) birds were housed in a thermoneutral chamber and fed with a normal-CP diet without PM supplementation. The other six groups were kept in a HS chamber (33°C) for 8 h (1000 hours to 1800 hours). Key results After 6 weeks, feeding broiler chickens with low-CP diets had adversely affected growth performance and intestinal protease activities, while mortality rate, heterophile to lymphocyte ratio, and serum cortisol concentration of the low-CP group were lower (P < 0.05) than those of the high-CP group. Dietary PM supplementation also positively influenced (P < 0.05) average daily gain, feed conversion ratio, intestinal lipase and trypsin activities and serum T4 concentration. There were the CP × PM interactions (P < 0.05) for jejunal villus height and villus surface area, indicating that the effect of PM on these responses was more marked at the lower dietary CP contents. Conclusions Supplementation with PM can ameliorate the detrimental effects of HS on productive performance and digestive enzyme activities in broilers. The PM supplementation could improve intestinal morphology when applied to the diets of heat-stressed broilers with lower CP contents (95% and 90% of the recommendations). Implications Although growth performance was reduced by feeding low-CP diets (90% of the normal CP content), a beneficial effect was observed on the stress indicators of broilers grown in HS conditions. Dietary supplementation of PM might also be an effective strategy to alleviate the adverse effect of HS.