The influence of vitamin C and early-age thermal conditioning on the quality of meat and specific production characteristics of broilers during heat stress

Abstract

Heat stress HS is one of the greatest problems in contemporary chicken production and it entails significant economic losses. The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of early-age thermal conditioning ETC , vitamin C Vit C supplementation, and their combination on the production characteristics and specific quality parameters of the meat of broilers which were exposed to chronic HS in the last two weeks of breeding. Four hundred broilers Cobb 500 of both sexes were divided into 4 experimental groups. Group C was given Vit C 2 g/L dissolved in water from day 22 until the end of production. Group T was exposed to ETC for a period of 24 h at the temperature of 38 ± 1 ºC and 40%-60% relative humidity on the fifth day of breeding. Group TC was the combination of the groups T and C, while group K was the control group. The results indicate that ETC, independently or in combination with Vit C, improves the production characteristics in terms of feed conversion reduction P