Effects of dietary betaine supplementation on growth performance of broilers during heat stress

Abstract: As an environmental stressor due to global warming, heat stress (HS) is considered as a major challenge in poultry industries in tropical countries like Bangladesh for substantial economic loss because of its severe effects on poultry health and productivity. Dietary betaine is thought to be an effective solution for reducing such losses. An experiment was conducted on 250 Ross 308 broilers for 35 days to see if betaine supplementation could improve performance under stressful conditions. During the trial, broiler birds were exposed to artificial HS of 30°C for 8 hours (in 18,19 and 20 days) and for 11h (in 26,27,28 days) during the day. The treatments are, G1: control feed without HS; G2: control feed with HS; G3: control +HS+1 g/kg betaine; G4: control + HS +1.5 g/kg betaine and G5: control +HS+2 g/kg betaine from day 11 to day 33 and average weight (AW), daily weight gain (DWG), feed intake (FI), FCR were analysed. HS had a lower effect on average weight and daily weight gain for the chickens whereas in total FI and FCR, betaine treated feed have some significant effect (p<0.05) for FI and (p