The effect of diet that contained fish oil on performance,serum parameters, the immune system and the fatty acidcomposition of meat in broilers.

A study with a duration of 42 days was conducted to evaluate the influence offish oil inclusion on performance parameters,serum lipid content, antibody responses to sheepred blood cells (SRBC) and the composition of antigen and meat fatty acids in broilers.Twohundred and sixteen 1-day-old broiler chicks from a commercial hybrid (Cobb 50 ) wereallocated randomly to four groups, which received feed supplemented with 1.5%, 3.0% and 6%fish oil or feed that was not supplemented (control group). The differences among the groupswere significant with regards to their performance, so that a low level of fish oil (1.5%) led tohigher feed intakes and an improvement in the efficiency of feeding in comparison to the controlgroup (p 0.01). The results of the omega-3 fatty acid evaluation indicated significantdifferences among groups (p 0.01) and the birds in the 6% fish oil-fed group had the highestlevel of n-3 fatty acid in their meat. The n-6:n-3 ratio of polyunsaturated fatty acids was lower inthe fish oil-fed groups compared to the control group (p 0.01) Broilers that were fed with dietsrich in omega-3 fatty acid had higher levels of anti-SRBC titers and lower levels of serumcholesterol and triglycerides than those fed with the control diet (p 0.05).