Growth Performance, Tibia Characteristics, Immune Response and Blood Metabolites of Broiler Chickens Fed Diets Containing Citrus Brown Snail (Caucasotachea Lencoranea) Powder as a Source of Calcium

Objective: An experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of citrus brown snail powder as a source of calcium on growth performance, tibia characteristics, immune response and blood metabolites in broiler chickens.  Methods: One hundred and eighty 1-day old chicks were randomly distributed into four treatments, each of which had three replicates. Each replicate contains 15 chicks. The treatments were included four inclusion rates of citrus brown snail powder (0, 0.5, 1 and 1.5%) in diets.  Results: The results showed that diets supplemented with 2% snail powder improved feed conversion ratio of broilers at 42 days of age (P < 0.05). Relative weights of organs, except for liver and digestive tract, were not affected by dietary treatments. The dietary treatments had a significant effect on blood triglyceride, alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and lymphocyte of broilers (P < 0.05). The others blood metabolites such as calcium, phosphorous, total protein, glucose, cholesterol, aspartate aminotransferase (AST), hemoglobin and heterophil to lymphocyte ratio were not influenced by dietary treatments. The results of this experiment showed that use of citrus brown snail powder in diets had no significant effect on the immune response (antibody titer) against Newcastle (NDV) and infectious bronchitis (IBV) disease viruses in broilers. Tibia calcium and phosphorous content was increased in broilers fed diets supplementation with citrus brown snail powder (P < 0.05). It was concluded that the addition of citrus brown snail powder to diet can improved growth performance and tibia characteristics in broilers.