Antibiotic growth promoters (AGPs) have been administrated to chicken feed for many years to prevent disease and increase growth rate. Since the use of antibiotics is now forbidden, replacements should be developed that can also be used in their place. One option is to use non-antibiotic feed additives generated from fungal ferments, which have been shown to improve gastrointestinal health and production. Fungal can be used as a feed additive, and their effectiveness has been demonstrated in boosting animal development and growth. Monascus purpureus is a fungus that has a potential and is commonly used in medicine. They produce many secondary metabolites that has been shown improve the nutritional quality, antibacterial properties and antioxidant activity.The obyective of this study was to see how adding the fermented product of the fungus Monascus purpureus as a feed additive affected to physiological parameters, intestine microbial population, and broiler internal organ weight. The method was one hundred and fifty un-sexed one-day-old chicks (DOC) were reared in an open cage. With three treatments, the study used a completely randomized design. The treatments consisted of a dose of the fungus Monascus purpureus as a feed additive (FA). These included T0 (basal diet/control); T1 (basal diet supplemented with 0.5% FA); and T2 (basal diet supplemented with 1% FA). Each treatment was repeated five times with a total of ten chiks each pen. Feed additive was provided to chicks beginning 8 days after rearing and was mixed in with the basal diet. Water was available at all times. The data were collected from chickens that were 42 days old. The results shown that the dose of feed additive up to 1.0% increase cholesterol value, total protein, MCHC, Coliform population in ileum and weight of heart also bursa of fabricius, whereas could reduce MCV, coliform population in caecum, and weight of pancreatic also caecum and no effect on broiler performance. The conclusion is supplementation of fermented product of the fungus Monascus purpureus as a feed additive that applied on boiler can improve the physiological parameters, intestinal microbial population and internal organ weight but no impact on performance.
Keywords | Fungal feed additive, Physiological parameter, Microbial population, Internal organ weight, Biochemical indices, Antibiotic growth promoters, Antioxidant, Broiler