I want to conduct the experiment in poultry or other species for the evaluation of growth promoter potential of herbal or polyherbal product. Please suggest me the appropriate approach.
If your control group shows maximal or optimal performance no additive will be able to show a positive effect. Thus you need suboptimal performance to test additives. I am not aware of any model that shows consistently suboptimal performance in broilers.
First, the diet should not be rate-limiting in terms of energy, protein, essential vitamins and minerals. There should be a control group and groups that receive doubling doses of the product (1x, 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x). Dosages should be expressed on a 100% dry matter basis, so if the product has 15% moisture, multiply the product weight by 0.85 to convert it to a dry matter basis. Dosage should be incorporated into the feed as a fixed percentage of the feed dry matter do avoid changes in intake as animals grow and consume more feed. It could be more challenging to detect differences in chickens because of their high efficiency and rapid growth naturally. Finally, YOU MUST do a statistical power test to know if you have enough observations to detect differences that you expect to see. Good luck and keep us informed.
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