Dietary Supplementation of <i>Ocimum Gratissimum </i>Improves Immune Response without Affecting the Growth Performance and Blood Characteristics in Taiwan Country Chicken

Abstract

Ocimum gratissimum (OG) was investigated in this study to determine its effect on the immune capability of black-feathered Taiwan country chickens. A total of 90 four-week-old male chickens were randomly assigned to a control group, which was fed with basal diet (BD), and two experimental groups, which were fed with a 0.2 and 0.4 g/kg OG-supplemented BD. During the experimental period, feed intake and body weight were recorded every two weeks to determine growth performance and feed efficiency. Blood was collected from the brachial vein of the chicken wing to obtain blood characteristics at 12 weeks of age. OG supplementation yielded no significant difference in growth performance and blood characteristics. The hemagglutination test showed that, compared with the control, the 0.4 g/kg BD group was able to maintain a significantly higher antibody titer level over two weeks after goat red blood cells injection (p＜0.05), suggesting that 0.4 g/kg improves humoral immune response. The phytohemagglutinin test showed that wattle swelling in the 0.2-0.4 g/kg BD groups was reduced more significantly than that in the control group (p＜0.05), suggesting that OG supplementation reduces cell-mediated immune response. Taken together, these findings suggest that although OG does not enhance growth or blood characteristics, the inverse changes in humoral and cell-mediated immune response may improve the overall health of the chickens.

Productive performance of purebred Thai native black-bone chickens (Chee Fah and Fah Luang) and their crossbreds

“…In view of ADG, FC chickens significantly grew faster than the others (p<0.05) with 9.34 g/day ( Table 2). The current findings were similar to Pradu Hang Dam chickens (Penmas, 2005), Black Hmong, Black Chinese, Brown Hmong and crossbred Black Hmong  Pradu Hang Dam chickens (Sungkhapreecha et al, 2015) However, some studies revealed greater ADG with the average varied from 16.1 to 54.5 g/day (Castellini et al, 2002;Chen et al, 2014;Leotaragul et al, 2015;Castellini et al, 2016). Due to the factors affect ADG are not only genetic, but also the age of the chicken.…”

Anthropogenic food provisioning and immune phenotype: Association among supplemental food, body condition, and immunological parameters in urban environments

“…Alternatively, higher BKA may have been related to the nutritional quality of the food source available. In addition to proteins, micronutrients, such as vitamin and mineral, are increasingly recognized as critical components of innate immune responses (Chen et al 2014;Ruiz et al, 2010). Stray cats in the low CCA area, such as other urban wildlife, will commonly rely on indirectly provisioned human food sources from garbage or dumpsters.…”

Aqueous Extract of the Leaves of Ocimum gratissimum (Lamiaceae) (False Basil) as an Alternative to the Chemical Antibiotics Used in Breeding Cobb-500 Broiler Chickens in the Department of Azaguie, Côte d’Ivoire

“…For this, an increasingly growing interest is focused on the use of natural products such as plant extracts [8] developing future drugs. Ocimum gratissimum (Lamiaceae) is one of the most used plants in traditional medicine in the treatment of several pathologies [9]. Indeed, it has healing, antifungal and anthelmintic properties [10].…”