Effect of in Ovo injection with Nano- Selenium or Nano- Zinc on Post-Hatch Growth Performance and Physiological Traits of Broiler Chicks

The current study was aimed to investigate the effect of in ovo injection with Nano-selenium or Nano-zinc on post-hatch growth performance and physiological traits of broiler chicks under heat stress. Four hundred fertile broiler eggs from cobb500™ flock were randomly divided into four treatments (100 eggs each). First was normally without injection (control), second was injected with 15 ppm Nano-Selenium (SENPs) /egg, third treatment was injected by 15 ppm Nano-Zinc (ZnNPs)/egg and fourth treatment was injected with phosphate buffered saline (PBs) 15 ppm /egg. To study the post-hatch performance, A total number of 240 one day-old chicks were randomly distributed into 4 equal experimental treatments of 60 chicks each. Every treatment was sub-divided into three replicates (20 chicks/ each), were at lasted 5weeks. Results obtained could be summarized as follows: Nano-selenium explained higher chick's weight at hatch, chick's weight to egg weight ratio and hatchability % than all other treatments. At first week of age, the body weight (BW) in the nano-selenium treatment increased than the untreated (control) treatment, although the gastrointestinal tract weight was 0.44 % and the intestine weight was 0.8 %, this is explained by an augmentation in the length of both the length of the small intestine and the gastrointestinal tract by 12 % at 7 day of age. The highest live body weight and body weight gain and the best-feed conversion ratio were recorded with Nano- selenium than all other treatments at 35 day of age. In conclusion, under semi-arid conditions, usage the Nano-selenium are not harmful to the embryo (injected with 15 ppm) and can be used to improve the post-hatch performance of broiler under semi arid condition.