Objective: To compare the effect of coccidiostate drugs and coccidial vaccines on the perfrormance of coccidia — infected broiler chicks. Design: Completely randomized design.
Animals: Nine hundred and sixty day-old Ross 208 broiler chicks. Procedure: Chicks were randomly assigned to eight treatments. Each treatment contained 3 replicates of 40 chicks. Treatment 1 and 2 (as negeative and positive control) did not receive any coccidiostates or coccidial vaccines. Treatments 3 and 4 fed diets supplemented with Salinomycine and Diclazoril respectively, but did not immunize. Treeatments 5 to 8 immunized with coccidial vaccines (including Livacox Q, Paracox 5, Livacox T, and Iracoc, respectively) by drinking water on 5 days of age. Chicks in treatments 2 to 8 were inoculated with a suspeusion containing four Eimeria species on 26 days of age. Surveillances for coccidian oocysts of feces samples were carried out from 7 to 13 days of post-challanged. Body weight (BW), body weight gain (BWG) , and feed conversion
ratio (FCR) were determined weekly.
Statistical analysis: Data for all response variables were subjected to ANOVA. Variable means for treatments showing significant differences in the ANOVA, were compared using the scheffe’s test. Results: The results indicated that using coccidial vaccines and coccidiostate drugs decreased oocysts per gram (OPG) of feces significantly (P<0.05). The highest mean of BW was related to the chicks treated with salinomycine with significant differences in BW among treatments. The lowest FCR was related to nonchallanged chicks (negative control).
Concluded: According to the results of this experimental trial, it could be concluded that coccidial vaccines and coccidiostate drugs could decrease the OPG significantly and improve production performance partially, in coccidia-infected broiler chicks.
)