Effect of dietary supplementation with flavonoid from Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi on growth performance, meat quality and antioxidative ability of broilers

Abstract An experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of dietary supplementation with flavonoid from Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi (SBGFN) as SBGFN-zinc (SBGFN-Zn) on growth performance, meat quality, immune responses and antioxidation of broilers. A total of 450 one-d-old Arbor Acres male broilers were randomly allocated to 5 treatments with 6 replicates of 15 birds per replicate for each treatment in a completely randomized design. Birds were fed a SBGFN-unsupplemented corn-soybean meal basal diet (control) or the basal diet supplemented with 60, 120, 180 or 240 mg SBGFN kg −1 from SBGFN-Zn for 42 d. Dietary SBGFN supplementation affected ( P −1 had lower ( P −1 had higher ( P −1 . The results from the present study indicate that dietary supplementation with 180 mg SBGFN kg −1 as SBGFN-Zn improved both meat quality and antioxidative ability of broilers.