A study was conducted to investigate the dietary supplementation of black cumin seeds (BCS) on carcass characteristics, chemical and fatty acid (FA) composition and antioxidant properties of thigh and breast meat of broiler chickens at 42 days of age. Three hundred sixty 1-day-old broiler chickens were allocated to five dietary treatment groups (each group containing eight replicate pens with each pen containing nine broiler chickens): basal diet (control; CON), CON + 0.05 g/kg of bacitracin methylene disalicylate (AB), CON + 5 g/kg of BCS (low dose of BCS), CON + 10 g/kg of BCS (medium dose of BCS) and CON + 20 g/kg of BCS (high dose of BCS). Weight (g) of slaughtered birds (p = .03), hot carcass (p = .007), breast (p = .03), thigh (p < .001), wing (p = .06), neck (p = .01), liver (p = .09), abdominal fat (p = .01) and total edible parts (p = .01) increased or tended to increase due to BCS supplementation compared with the CON. The concentrations of dry matter, crude protein and ether extract in chicken thigh and breast meat increased (p = .038 to <.001) with increasing doses of BCS in diets. The ferric reducing antioxidant activity in blood and meat increased linearly with increasing doses of BCS in the diets. However, peroxide values in meat were not affected by BCS and AB on both days 1 and 7 of storage at 4°C. Supplementation of BCS increased the concentrations of C14:1, C18:3n-6, C20:1, C20:2 FA and PUFA linearly (p < .05) and tended to increase (p = .098) the concentration of C18:2cis linearly. However, the concentrations of C16:0 and C16:1 FA decreased linearly with increasing doses of BCS in the diets. In conclusion, dietary supplementation of BCS at 20 g/kg diet may improve slaughter body weight, beneficial FA concentrations and antioxidant properties of broiler chicken meat.
Keywords: antioxidant property; black cumin; carcass traits; essential oil; fatty acid composition.
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