Table 3.
Effect of antibiotic growth promoter or probiotic supplementation in the diet on mortality of broiler chickens under naturally occurring necrotic enteritis challenge.
| Treatments 1 | Time Period (day) | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0–8 | 7–9 | 9–14 | 15–21 | 22–28 | 29–42 | 0–42 | |
| NC | 5.28 a | 4.44 a | 2.23 | 0.00 | 1.64 | 3.60 a | 11.39 a |
| PC | 0.28 b | 0.55 b | 1.50 | 0.31 | 0.00 | 0.00 b | 1.94 b |
| Probiotic | 4.72 a | 1.51 b | 0.95 | 0.64 | 0.73 | 0.42 b | 6.94 ab |
| SEM 2 | 1.39 | 0.94 | 0.61 | 0.31 | 0.53 | 0.73 | 1.79 |
| p-value | 0.030 | 0.018 | 0.347 | 0.347 | 0.106 | 0.002 | 0.003 |
a,b In each column, means with different letters are significantly different (p < 0.05). 1 Treatments include: negative control (NC): birds received a corn-soybean meal basal diet; positive control (PC): NC + virginiamycin (Stafac®20) at the level of 0.45 kg/ton from d 0–42; Probiotic: NC + PrimaLac at the level of 1.36 kg/ton in starter and grower 1 diets; 0.91 kg/ton in grower 2 and finisher diets. 2 SEM: Standard error of means.