Effect of different phase levels of medium chain triglycerides on the growth performance, excreta microflora and blood profiles of broilers

Medium chain triglycerides (MCTs) provide polka dot grouper Chromileptes altevelis with a more readily utilizable source of energy than long-chain fatty acids (LCFAs) and significantly elevate the plasma cholesterol level of chickens. As a possible alternative to feed antibiotics, this study investigated the effect of different phase levels of medium chain triglycerides on the growth performance, excreta microflora and blood profiles in broilers. A total of 450 ROSS 308 mixed-sex broilers with an average initial body weight of $49{\pm}0.79g$ (1 day of age) were used in this trial. They were randomly assigned to the following 3 treatments (15 birds / 10 replications): CON (Basal diet); MCT1 (Starter, Grower, Finisher: Basal diet + 0.1%, 0.075%, 0.05% of MCT) and MCT2 (Starter, Grower, Finisher: Basal diet + 0.1%, 0.1%, 0.1% of MCT). The results show that supplementing the diets with different phase levels of MCT did not have a significant impact on the body weight gain (BWG), feed intake (FI) and feed conversion ratio (FCR) during the overall experimental period. Additionally, there were no differences in the blood profiles and excreta microflora among the treatments. However, this study found that the BWG was increased by 2.3%, and the FCR was decreased by 0.6% in the broiler fed MCT1 treatment group during overall experiment phase. Therefore, the results suggest that MCTs could be used as an alternative to growth promoting feed additives. Moreover, further research should be done to evaluate the effect of the different levels of MCTs.