Vol. 9, Special Issue 7 (2020)

Author(s):
Saim Qureshi, HM Khan, Umer Amin, MS Mir, S Adil and AH Sofi

Abstract:
The environmental stress has been reported to affect gut histomorphology of chicken. Hence, the present study was undertaken to investigate the influence of cold stress and its remedial measures on jejunal histomorphology of broiler chicken. 270 day-old commercial broiler birds were distributed into 7 treatments groups, each having 3 replicates of 13 chicks each. In all treatment groups, birds were subjected to cold stress at 2 0C to 8 0C for 8 hours from 3rd to 6th week of age except T1 and T5 groups. Birds in T1 and T5 were reared under normal temperature conditions (25 0C). T1 served as control group. In T3, antioxidant in the form of vitamin E @ 250 mg per kg of feed was added to basal diet. In T4 and T7, Chromium @ 0.1 gram and 0.2 gram per kg of feed was added to basal diet respectively. Broiler chickens from treatment groups under cold stress (T2, T3, T4, T6 and T7) had significantly (p≤0.05) lower villus height (VH), crypt depth (CD) and VH/CD ratio with infiltration of inflammatory cells predominantly heterophils in the mucosa when compared with the control group (T1). VH, CD and VH/CD ratio increased numerically but not significantly (p>0.05) in T5 when compared to control. Addition of Vitamin E and Chromium resulted in higher VH, CD and VH/CD ratio when compared to T2. In conclusion, cold stress had adverse effect on jejuna histomorphology, however, cold stress mitigating remedies such as early cold conditioning, supplementation of vitamin E or chromium reduced the pathological effects of cold stress in broiler chicken.