Ebook Morphological Changes of the Intestinal Villi in Chickens Fed the Dietary Charcoal Powder Including Wood Vinegar Compounds
Chemical medicines such as disinfectant and insecticide, vaccine, and antibiotic have been frequently used for safeguard against chicken disease in poultry industry. However, every effort should be made also to produce high quality animal products without using these medicines and to reduce environmental contamination by efficient utilization of natural substances. Charcoal is a solid fuel made by dry distillation of wood, and powder of which is traditionally scattered on the floor in chicken house to reduce the smell of feces by adsorbing ammonia. A mixed powder of wood vinegar compounds and amorphous charcoal carbon (CWVC) has been used as an oral antidote to produce high animal productions. The dietary addition of CWVC to diets induced a significant increase in hen-day egg production and feed conversion ratio (Sakaida et al, 1987 a) and in broiler hatchability (Sakaida et al, 1987 b). Also in our preliminary feeding experiment, feed intake did not show a difference among 0, 1, 3 and 5% dietary CWVC diets, but the body weight gain of birds fed 1 % dietary CWVC diet was increased, improving the feed conversion ratio (unpublished).
Although the improved growth performance of chicken fed the dietary CWVC have been reported, the reason why CWVC induces such a powerful effective stimulation on growth performances has not been determined, but it may be related to their intestinal functions. The intestinal histological alterations are known to be induced by the fed diets (Langhout et al, 1999 ; Yasar and Forbes, 1999), and be intimately related to intestinal functions (Shamoto et ah, 1999 ; Shamoto and Yamauchi, 2000 ; Yamauchi et ah, 1996 ; Yamauchi and Tarachai, 2000). Therefore, it was thus of great interest to investigate the histological alterations of the intestinal villi in chickens fed the non-nutritive sorptive CWVC.
In this study, effects of dietary CWVC on feed intake, body weight gain, and feed conversion ratio were examined in chickens. Then, villus height, cell area and cell mitosis number in each intestinal segment of these birds were observed using light microscope. Besides, fine structural alterations of the villus apex surface were compared using scanning electron microscope.
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