The Effects of Dietary Cinnamon (Cinnamomum Zeylanicum) Oil Supplementation on Broiler Feeding Behaviour, Growth Performance, Carcass Traits and Meat Quality Characteristics

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of dietary supplementation with cinnamon oil on growth performance, behaviour, carcass traits and meat quality of broilers. One hundred and thirty-five Cobb 700 day-old broiler chickens were randomly assigned into three equal treatment groups with three replicates (pens) of fifteen chickens each. The dietary treatments consisted of the basal diet as control (C) and basal diet supplemented with 0.5 (C1) or 1.0 (C2) ml of cinnamon oil per kg of feed. On day 49, 5 birds from each pen (15 per treatment) were slaughtered and the pectoralis major muscle samples were collected for meat quality evaluation. No effect of cinnamon oil supplementation on the probability of a bird standing at the feeder or the drinker was observed until the age of 17 days. Moreover, cinnamon oil supplementation did not affect body weight, feed intake and feed conversion ratio. No significant differences were also found in internal organs’ weights and carcass characteristics among the treatments, although cold carcass weight was the lightest in the C1 group. At the same time, colour parameters, pH24, cooking loss, intramuscular fat and shear values were not affected by diets. The extent of lipid oxidation in raw pectoralis major muscle stored at 4ºC for up to 9 days or at -20ºC for up to 6 months was also not influenced by the dietary treatment. The present findings suggest that cinnamon oil at the selected concentrations may not have the potential to improve broiler growth performance, carcass and meat quality characteristics.