A Comparison of the Effects of Dietary Ginger Powder and Avilamycin on Growth Performance and Intestinal Salmonella Count of Challenged Broiler Chickens

This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of ginger powder on the performance of Salmonella chal-lenged broiler chicks and to compare its efficacy as growth promoter with an antibiotic, avilamycin. In a completely randomized design, 300 chicks were divided into six groups, five replicates with 10 birds per each replicate. The treatments included negative control (basal diet without ginger or antibiotic and chal-lenging), positive control (basal diet without ginger or antibiotic, but with challenging), ginger treated group (5.0 g/kg ginger, without challenging), challenged ginger treated group (5.0 g/kg ginger, with chal-lenging), antibiotic treated group (100 mg/kg avilamycin, without challenging) and challenged antibiotic treated group (100 mg/kg avilamycin, with challenging). The lowest mean of mortality was recorded in the antibiotic treated group and the highest in the positive control. Inclusion of ginger to the diet of challenged chicks decreased numerically the mortality as compared with the positive control. Broilers in the positive control had the lowest overall daily gain. Dietary inclusion of ginger or avilamycin increased (P < 0.05) daily weight gain, but the effect of avilamycin was greater than ginger. In the overall period (days 0-42), chal-lenging increased feed conversion ratio and inclusion of avilamycin and ginger to the diet decreased (P < 0.05) it, but the effect of avilamycin was greater than ginger. Finally, inclusion of ginger powder in the diet could improve the performance of unchallenged and challenged chicks, but its efficacy is lower than avilamycin.