Table 2.
Effects of heat stress on the growth performance and the guanidinoacetic acid (GAA) intervention effects in broilers.
| Treatment1 |
P value3 |
|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Items2 | NC | HS | PF | HG | ANOVA | T test |
| Heat exposure for 7 d | ||||||
| ADFI (g/bird/d) | 148.38 ± 5.89a | 125.70 ± 5.40b | 129.22 ± 5.12b | 132.89 ± 2.59 | 0.027 | 0.277 |
| ADG (g/bird/d) | 86.56 ± 2.04a | 57.60 ± 4.84b | 76.57 ± 3.52a | 67.00 ± 3.22 | <0.001 | 0.365 |
| F/G (g/g) | 1.67 ± 0.03b | 2.22 ± 0.12a | 1.70 ± 0.02b | 1.90 ± 0.08 | <0.001 | 0.261 |
| Heat exposure for 14 d | ||||||
| ADFI (g/bird/d) | 168.06 ± 4.62a | 125.62 ± 4.87b | 128.66 ± 8.47b | 143.16 ± 4.90 | 0.001 | 0.727 |
| ADG (g/bird/d) | 87.68 ± 3.51a | 53.65 ± 3.08c | 70.37 ± 6.43b | 66.12 ± 3.67 | 0.001 | 0.640 |
| F/G (g/g) | 1.87 ± 0.04b | 2.43 ± 0.12a | 1.95 ± 0.06b | 2.17 ± 0.04 | 0.046 | 0.307 |
1
NC, normal control group; HS, heat stress group; PF, pair-fed group; HG, GAA group. Values are mean ± SE of 6 replicates.
2
F/G, feed to gain ratio.
3
One-way ANOVA and Tukey's test were conducted for the NC, HS, and HG groups; T test was conducted for the HS and HG groups.
ab
Means with different superscripts within each row are significantly different among the NC, HS, and PF groups (P < 0.05).