The effect of anti-stress nutrients Vitamin C and transportation hours on the transportation stress in broiler chicken

A total number of 54 broiler chicks were purchased at the age of 36 days from commercial broiler farm. The broiler chicks were randomly assigned to six treatment groups such as Control groups with (0, 3 and 6 hour) of transportation and Groups orally administered with vitamin C with (0, 3 and 6 hour) of transportation. A level of 120mg of vitamin C was orally administered with 2ml of distilled water 30 minutes before transportation. Heterophil/lymphocyte (H/L ratio) was used as indicator for stress response of broiler chickens. May- GrOnwald and Giemsa stain solution were used to observe the morphology of the heterophil and lymphocyte ratio under compound microscope. Significantly (P<0.05) lower H/L ratio was noted with broiler chicks provided vitamin C than that of Control (1.85 ± 0.103, 1.27 ± 0.04b, respectively) prior to transportation as a result of stress due to loading, handling and stocking density in transportation crates. Three and six hours transportation treatment group are not significantly different but different in their numerical value between Control and vitamin C group which is (2.35 ± 0.20 and 2.05 ± 0.17) and (2.35 ± 0.25 and 2.23 ± 0.20) respectively indicating that Control groups were more stress compared to the vitamin C treatment group. In conclusion, oral administration of 120mg of vitamin C, 30 minutes before transportation alleviate the transportation stress during loading, handling and transporting the broiler chickens to the processing plant. For future aspect, it is worthwhile to study the oral administration of optimum level of vitamin C before transportation on stress response of broiler chickens with different transportation hours.