a review of medicinal plants effectivity on poultry eimeria species

Avian coccidiosis has a high economic impact on the poultry industry worldwide. the etiology of this intestinal disease are pathogenic eimeria species that belong to the phylum apicomplexa. differences between these eimeria species include the invasion of specific sites of the intestine, pathogenicity and type of lesion produced. the clinical disease in broilers includes diarrhea, reduction in weight gain and feed ingestion, and in severe cases, mortality. the strategies for the control of the disease includes the use of vaccination and drugs for prophylaxis. nevertheless, the continuous use of different coccidiostats have led to drug resistance by eimeria. among alternative approaches, traditional treatments using medicinal plants have been investigated and researched in recent years. broiler chicks at 1 d of age (n = 150) should be arbitrarily distributed into 6 groups. birds from groups 1–3 should receive the starter and finisher diets plus 2, 4, and 6 g of desired herbal compound/kg of the diet, respectively. birds from group 4 should be fed the starter and finisher diets plus 66 mg of salinomycin, group 5 constitute the positive control (pc), with the coccidial challenge, and group 6 constitute the negative control (nc), without the coccidial infection, which are both maintained on diets without any herbal compound. as it was mentioned, anticoccidial effects of herbal compounds were investigated by many studies. in some of these studies, it was discovered that herbal compounds might show good anticoccidial effects, especially on e. tenella. so perhaps it is time for more research to be conducted on the use of medicinal plants in the treatment of important diseases such as coccidiosis so that they can be officially used as new generation drugs in the treatment of this disease before drug resistance to current commercial anticoccidials reaches a point where they become useless.