Supplementation of Vitamin C for health promotion and combating heat stress in poultry

Abstract

Author(s): Amit Kumar, Barun Roy, Subha Ganguly, Praveen Kumar Praveen, Shashank Shekhar and Nirupama Dalai

Heat stress is known to be one of the major problems facing broiler industryin the tropical and subtropical areas1. This is because broilers can only attain the desired economic market weight in a stress-freeenvironment. Heat stress may occur at 27ºC and above; therefore,the birds start to use more energy to lose the accumulatedbody heat. The birds increase their respiration rate to increase their evaporative cooling, thus causing heat stress due to aspiration of more ambient humidity via panting.The present review discusses on the various promising effect of Vitamin C supplementation in diet in regulating the deleterious effect of heat stress in poultry birds