Lipid Profiles of Grower-Finisher Broiler Chickens to Dietary Ginger

Study was carried out to investigate the effect of graded levels of ginger on the lipid profiles of grower-finisher chickens. 120 day-old chicks were used in the investigation. The chicks on arrival at the venue of study were first brooded for 2 weeks after which they were randomly allotted to their experimental diets. There were 30 birds/treatment with 3 replicates of 10 birds/replicate. Treatment 1 (T1, control contained 0gram of ginger), treatment 2 (T2, contained 4 gram of ginger), treatment 3 (T3, contained 6 gram of ginger) and treatment 4 (T4, contained 8 gram of ginger)/kg of diet, respectively. The birds received their respective experimental diets for 6 weeks. At the end of the last 6 weeks 3 birds from each replicate of the 4 treatments were killed by severing at their necks and blood collected into non-ethylene diamine tetra-acetic acid (EDTA) sample tubes for lipid profiles analyses. Results showed that birds of the T1 grouphad significantly (P < 0.05) higher total cholesterol (TC), total glyceride (TG), low-density lipoprotein (LDL) as well as very low-density lipoprotein (VLDL) levels compared with ginger-containing diets’ (T2, T3 and T4) groups that had them linearly reduced; whereas, the T2, T3 and T4birds linearly had significantly (P < 0.05) higher levels of high-density lipoproteins (HDL) compared with the T1 group of birds. It was concluded that dietary ginger lowered TC, TG and LDL contents and simultaneously increased broiler HDL contents.