Anil Kumar Chitithoti, Ramana Jampala Venkata, Rama Prasad Jwalapu, Sudheer Sandanamudi Devanesan and Satyanarayana Reddy P V V
A study was conducted on 288 broiler male chicks fed with maize-soybean-fishmeal based diet supplemented with Zinc-sulphate at 0(T1), 20 (T2), 40 (T3), 60 (T4) and 80 (T5) mg/Kg diet and Zinc-methionine (BIOPLEX) at 20 (T6), 40 (T7), 60 (T8), 80 (T9) mg/Kg diet. Each treatment consisted of 4 replicates with 8 birds per replicate. All the birds during the first week were fed with a basal diet without any zinc supplementation to deplete the body zinc reserves. From 1st to 4th week the birds were fed with starter diet containing 23.0% CP, 2877 Kcal of ME/Kg diet and 5th and 6th week the birds were fed with finisher diets containing 20.4% CP, 2943 Kcal of ME/Kg diet. The zinc supplementation showed positive significant (P<0.05) immune response to SRBC titers, NDV titers and CMI index indicating that there is increased immune response to zinc supplementation. The Zinc-methionine supplementation showed better immune response than Zinc-sulphate supplementation. The SRBC titers and ND titers showed better humoral immune response with supplementation at 60 mg/Kg diet and 80 mg/Kg diet respectively with both Zincsulphate and Zinc-methionine. The CMI index indicated that the cell mediated immune response was highest at 40 mg/Kg dietary zinc-sulphate and 80 mg/Kg dietary Zinc-methionine supplementation. The heterophill to lymphocyte ratio indicated that birds showed less stress when zinc was supplemented