Efficacy of Fortifying Poultry Diet with Capsaicin and Chili Powder on the Performance of Broilers Exposed to Heat Stress

The experiment was conducted in the poultry field of the Department of Livestock - College of Agriculture - University of Kufa for the period 24/9/2023 to 28/10/2023. The aim of the study was to investigate the effect of adding capsaicin and chili C. annuum powder to poultry diet in some productive traits of broilers under heat stress conditions. The experiment consisted of 360 Ross-308 hybrid unsexed broiler chicks, one day old at an initial weight of 40 g/chick raised on a 5 cm floor mattress. The chicks were fed a starter diet from the age of 1-10 days, a second diet from the age of 11 days - 24 days, then a final diet from the age of 25 days - 35 days. The energy levels of the three diets were 3015, 3081, and 3210 joules/kg with protein levels of 23.11, 21.51, and 19.58, respectively. One-day-old chicks were randomly divided into 6 treatments, with 3 replicates per treatment. Each replicate included 20 chicks. The treatments were: T1 control (standard diet), treatment T2, T3 and T4 standard diet fortified with capsaicin compound at an amount of 15, 30 and 45 mg/kg diet, respectively, while the diet of the treatments T5 and T6 was mixed with chili powder at 5 and 10 g or mg/kg diet, respectively. The results showed that the final body weights of birds at 5 weeks of age increased significantly in the T3 treatment over the rest of the treatments, and the T2 and T5 treatments outperformed the T1 control treatment. Treatments T3 and T4 were significantly higher than the rest of the experimental treatments in terms of total weight gain, while the rate of feed consumption did not differ between all treatments. On the other hand, a significant improvement (P<0.05) was recorded in the cumulative feed conversion factor for treatments T2, T3, and T6 compared to the control treatment T1.