Alleviating the oxidative stress in Japanese quails fed L- carnitine and creatine monohydrate through impacts on productive performance, ileal microflora, digestibility and redox system

Abstract

This study was aimed to investigate the effects of L-carnitine (Car), creatine monohydrate (CrM) and their combination (CarCrM) as dietary antioxidants materials on productive performance, digestibility, ileal eubiosis, blood chemistry and redox system of stressed quails challenged by lead acetate (LA) in drinking water. In total, 600 quails were assigned into 5 treatments with 4 replications each and 30 chicks per replication from 1 until 42 days old. The treatments involved control (T1), stressed treatment (adding 2.5 ppm of LA in drinking water only; T2) and treatments of adding 500 mg/kg Car+LA (T3), 500 mg/kg CrM+LA (T4) and CarCrM (250 mg/kg Car plus 250 mg/kg CrM)+LA (T5). A completely randomized design was followed to analyze treatment influences on variables. In comparison to T2, the results showed that T5 and T4 had equivalent positive influence followed by T3 to increase (p≤0.05) body weight, feed intake, survivability, carcass yield and digestibility accompanied with increase lactic acid bacteria and reduced total coliform, E.coli in ileum. Also, increased levels (p≤0.05) of glutathione peroxidase, superoxide dismutase, catalase and glutathione in serum and ferric-reducing ability of plasma were obtained by T5 followed by T4. Moreover, T5 and T4 achieved low values (p≤0.05) of feed efficiency and serum lipid hydroperoxide, malondialdehyde, cortisol, aspartate transaminase, alanine aminotransferase, alkaline phosphatase,gamma-glutamyl transferase, creatine kinase and creatinine. The results confirm that dietary CarCrM or CrM mitigated stress and reinforced antioxidant pool which was reflected by supported productive and physiological aspects of birds. Dietary Car seemed less powerful effect than CarCrM and CrM but without negative influence compared with stressed treatment.