Effects of Dietary Taurine on Growth Performance and Development of Digestive and Immune Organs of Broilers

The experiment was conducted to determine the effects of dietary taurine on growth performance and development of digestive and immune organs of broilers.A single factor design was adopted,and 250 one-day-old male chicks were randomly allocated into 5 groups with 5 replicates per group.The birds were fed the diets supplemented with 0,0.25,0.50,1.00,and 2.00 g/kg taurine,respectively.Growth performance,the weight of major digestive organs and immune organs,and the activities of digestive enzymes in pancreas of broilers at the age of 7,22 and 44 days were measured.The results showed that dietary taurine did not affect growth performance of broilers(P0.05),except that the feed to gain ratio in the 1st week of the experiment was linearly reduced with the increasing of dietary taurine(P0.05).However,the relative weight of pancreas of broilers at the age of 22 days was linearly reduced(P=0.05),whereas the activities of trypsin(P0.10) and amylase(P0.05) in the pancreas were significantly increased;it was clearly shown that the response to the increased dietary taurine levels was quadratic in the relative weight of pancreas of broilers at the age of 44 days,which was lowest with the addition of taurine calculated to 0.99 g/kg.Neither the bursa of Fabricius index nor spleen index was affected(P0.05),but the thymus index of broilers at the age of 7 and 22 days was significantly increased(P0.05).The results indicate that taurine supplementation has no remarkable effects on growth performance of broilers,while it linearly enhances feed conversion during early phase,and it increases thymus index with the development of the pancreas inhibited.