Abstract

During many years, the main objective of the poultry meat industry was to improve body weight and feed efficiency of the birds. However, in the modern poultry industry, there are other parameters that need to be taken into consideration such as low cholesterol and improved fatty acid profile. For this purpose, an experiment was conducted to evaluate canola oil effects on the Iranian native Turkey’s serum parameters and breast meat fatty acid.  Ninety male turkey chicks were randomly distributed into three experimental (0, 2.5 and 5%) with three replicate for each group. Diets were isonitrogenous and isoenergetic were given to turkey chicks throughout four periods of breeding (4 - 8, 8 - 12, 12 - 16 and 16 - 20th). The blood sample was taken at the end of the breeding period and serum parameters calculated by Friedewald method. Two pieces from each pen randomly selected and slaughtered with cutting the neck vessels and experimental samples from each breast meat sample prepared and pattern of fatty acids of breast samples was determined by gas chromatography. Serum values were not found to be significantly different (P < 0.05) in triglycerides and VLDL and in CHOL, LDL and HDL (P < 0.05) was significantly different compared to the control group. n-3 Fatty acids used as α-linoleic acid using canola oil had positive effect on the values and amount of this fatty acid in the control of 3.5562% reached to 6.7994 and 8.2447%, respectively in the experimental treatments (P < 0.05). Finally, our results illustrated that canola oil had significant impact on lipid metabolism in native turkey and could improve their serum lipid profile.

Key words: Turkey, canola oil, cholesterol, triglyceride, HDL, LDL.