Poultry is particularly sensitive to environmental challenges, especially heat stress. Climatic condition such as heat stress has a negative effect on poultry production thereby altering their behaviour and physiological homeostasis. The means of acquiring synthetic pharmaceuticals are not easily obtainable to small scale farmers, therefore there is an urgent need for cheap, unconventional source of antioxidant such as Vernonia amygdalina (VALE) to alleviate the adverse effect of heat stress. A total of 45 cockerels were randomly distributed into 5 treatment groups, replicated 3 times with 3 birds per replicate under elevated summer temperature to investigate the effect of Vernonia amygdalina leaves extract supplementation via drinking water on their haematology and serum characteristics which lasted for 8 weeks. Parameters evaluated under haematological profile were: Packed cell volume, white blood cell, haemoglobin concentration, red blood cell, platelet, mean corpuscular haemoglobin, mean cell volume, mean corpuscular haemoglobin concentration while under serum biochemistry; Triglceride, total cholesterol, HDL, LDL, sodium, calcium, alkaline amino phosphase, alkaline amino transferase, aspartate amino transferase, total antioxidant potential were evaluated. The results of proximate analysis shows a chemical composition of 1295.19KJ/mole Calorific value, 53.03% CHO, 23.68% CP, 7.32% CF, Crude lipids 0.3%, 8.90% ash. The result of phytochemical screening revealed saponin (+++), tannin (+++), phenol (+++), flavonoid (++), steroid (++), glycosides (++) and anthraquinone (++). The presence of these essentials nutrients and minerals implies Vernonia amygdalina could be utilized as a source of feed supplement to improve blood profile and serum biochemistry of heat-stressed poultry. Results obtained for serum biochemistry shows a significant different in triglyceride for birds in Treatment 2 in which the value recorded was lower. Aspartate amino transferase also shows a significant difference in Treatment 4 which is the highest value that receives 60mls of the extract although not significantly different across the treatment group. Result obtained for Haematological profile shows that there is no significant different in all treatment groups but a higher concentration was observed in treatment 5 which received 90mls of the extract compared with the control group.
In conclusion, VALE at 90mls can be used as a natural source of antioxidant. Further studies can be conducted using higher concentration of VALE.
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