A seasonal problem in many parts of the world, a high ambient temperature causes economic losses through reducing feed intake while decreasing nutrient utilization, live weight gain, egg production, egg quality and feed efficiency of poultry. Several methods are currently available to alleviate the negative effects of high environmental temperature on the performance of poultry. However, since it is expensive to cool buildings in which animals are housed, such methods are focused mostly on dietary manipulation. In terms of reducing the negative effects of environmental stress, vitamin C, vitamin E and vitamin A are used in the poultry diet because of the reported benefits of these vitamins including their anti-stress effects and also due to the fact that their utilization and thus normal concentrations are reduced during heat stress. This review focuses on the effects of dietary vitamin (C, E and A) supplementation in poultry reared under chronic heat stress.
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Şahin et al. (2003) studied this question.