IPB Students Healthy Broiler Chicken with Cinnamon Flour
Fani Karina Astrini, student of the Department of Feed Nutrition and Technology, Faculty of Animal Husbandry, Bogor Agricultural University (IPB) under the guidance of Dr. Ir. Rita Mutia, MAgr, and Dr. Ir. Widya Hermana, MSi conducted a study to find out the effectiveness of giving cinnamon flour with different levels of health status including erythrocytes, leukocytes and hematocrit values, hemoglobin levels and differentiation of leukocytes and immune organs of broiler chickens.
The research conducted by Fani began with the method used by farmers to improve the performance of broiler chickens by giving antibiotics. Antibiotics are drugs or chemicals that are generally made synthetically. But there are problems with synthetic antibiotics, namely residues. Whereas if it refers to the Law on Animal Husbandry and Animal Health No.18 of 2009 article 22 paragraph 4c which reads "Everyone is prohibited from using food mixed with certain hormones and/or antibiotics for feed additives".
Therefore, alternative feed additives are needed which have the same role as antibiotics but are more friendly to human and livestock welfare and the environment. "In this study, the material that I will test as an alternative ingredient is cinnamon, because it has a compound that functions as an antibiotic such as cinnamaldehyde, flavonoids, and tannins which can be useful as antibacterials," explained Fani.
Antibiotics can reduce the population of bacteria in the digestive system so as to increase the availability of dietary nutrients to be absorbed by the body of livestock that will be used as livestock growth. Fani added, "Natural antibiotics can increase livestock immunity and not leave residues in livestock so that it does not endanger humans who consume the livestock products," he added.
To prove whether cinnamon can be a natural antibiotic, Fani uses 160 broiler chickens that are still one day old. The cages used were 16 plots with ten chickens in each cage. Each of these cages will be given a different treatment depending on the concentration of cinnamon flour.
Based on the results of research conducted by Fani, there were three concentrations of cinnamon flour in rations which, if given to broiler chickens, would produce healthy broilers and normal immune organs, namely at concentrations of two percent, four percent, and six percent.
