Effects of in Ovo Injection and Inclusion a Blend of Essential Oils and Organic Acids in High NSPs Diets of Broiler Breeders on Performance of Them and Their Offspring.

Two factorial completely randomized design trials 2×2 and 2×2×2 were conducted to evaluate the effect of a blend of essential oils and organic acids (Biacid™) in broiler breeder diets at two levels, two dietary non-starch polysaccharides (NSPs) levels and in ovo injection of Biacid™ on their progenies performance, respectively. 240 broiler breeders of Ross 308 strain were fed from the age of week 44th for 12 weeks in four groups. 120 produced eggs from each group were divided in two groups of 60 eggs for injecting by 0.5 ml of Biacid™ or distilled water. Injection was done during transferring from setter to hatcher in day 18th of incubation. Twenty-five cockerels from each of 8 treatments were housed into separate pens. Using Biacid™ and high NSPs in broiler breeders' ration affected hatchability, embryo mortality, weight of day old chicks and progenies' carcass yield significantly (p<0.05) whereas in ovo injection of Biacid™ did not show significant effects in this regards (p≥0.05). Offspring's abdominal fat was neither affected by broiler breeders' rations nor in ovo injection of Biacid™ (p≥0.05). Biacid™ and high NSPs content in broiler breeders' ration affected all primary and secondary humoral immune responses of progenies against sheep red blood cells (p<0.05). In ovo injection of Biacid™ increased the primary IgG, primary IgT and secondary IgG responses (p<0.05). The interaction of the effects of Biacid™ and high NSPs in broiler breeders' ration and also in ovo injection of Biacid™ affected progenies' weight gain, feed intake, feed conversion ratio and European production index significantly (p<0.05). It seems that using Biacid™ in broiler breeders' diet can modify the undesirable effects of high NSPs content of breeders' ration on performance of their offspring.

Self-organization property of Kohonen's map with general type of stimuli distribution.

Here the self-organization property of one-dimensional Kohonen's algorithm in its 2k-neighbor setting with a general type of stimuli distribution and non-increasing learning rate is considered. A new definition of the winner is given, which coincides with the usual definition in implementations of the algorithm. We prove that the probability of self-organization for all initial weights of neurons is uniformly positive. For the special case of a constant learning rate, it implies that the algorithm self-organizes with probability one. The conditions imposed on the neighborhood function, stimuli distribution and learning rate are quite general.