The present experiment was carried out to determine the effect of feeding a diluted diet together with avilamycin or probiotics on catch-up growth of broiler chickens. Three hundred day-old chicks (Ross 308 hybrid) were assigned to 4 treatments with 5 replicates based on a completely randomized design. The control group, which met NRC requirements, fed a diet consisting of 2900 KCal/kg ME and 20.8%CP. A diluted diet included 2700 KCal/kg ME and 19.4%CP fed to the negative control group during 7 to 21 days of age. There were two additional treatments with 10ppm avilamycin and 100ppm probiotic, respectively. Feeding the diluted diet resulted in reduced body weight gain (P<0.05). Final body weight was higher in chickens having received avilamycin. Although this difference was insignificant compared with the control, it was significant in comparison with other groups. There was no significant difference in terms of feed intake among the treatments. However, birds which received avilamycin had superior feed conversion ratio to other groups. Birds in the control group had the highest abdominal fat content but the difference was not significant. In conclusion, avilamycin significantly increased body weight gain during catch-up growth though the probiotic caused no significant change.

Keywords: Avilamycin, Broiler, Dilution diet, Probiotics.

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