Table 8.
Incidence of histopathological changes (number of cases) 1 in breast muscles (BM) and leg muscles (LM) and muscle fiber diameter 2 (arithmetic mean, SEM), in broiler chickens fed diets with different levels of full-fat Hermetia illucens (HI) larvae meal.
| Item (n = 6) |
Breast Muscles (BM) | Leg Muscles (LM) | p-Value | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dietary Treatment | Dietary Treatment | |||||||||
| HI0 | HI50 | HI75 | HI100 | HI0 | HI50 | HI75 | HI100 | BM | LM | |
| 1 Histopathological changes (no. of cases) | ||||||||||
| Loss of cross-striations | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0.399 | 0.146 |
| Hyalinization of muscle fibers | 1 | 4 | 3 | 6 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 0.003 | 0.089 |
| Focal defragmentation of muscle fibers | 5 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 0.365 | 0.876 |
| Focal necrosis of muscle fibers and infiltration of lymphoid cells | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.169 | 0.406 |
| Multifocal necrosis of muscle fibers and infiltration of lymphoid cells and heterophils | 3 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0.142 | 0.406 |
| Focal infiltration of lymphoid cells between muscle fibers | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 0.916 | 0.484 |
| Fibromuscular dysplasia (FMD) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0.399 | 0.399 |
| p-value | SEM | |||||||||
| 2 Breast muscle fiber diameter (µm) | 62.94 a | 43.99 b | 34.33 c | 27.29 d | - | - | - | 0.000 | 0.58 | |
1 Significant at p < 0.05, (chi-squared test). 2 Muscle fiber diameter, one-way analysis of variance and Tukey’s test, p < 0.05. a–d Mean values not followed by a common superscript are significantly different at p < 0.05.