Fig. 7

Schematic presentation of the experimental trial. Time values are in days. Chickens were provided with different experimental diets from day 1 until the end of the experiment. All birds except negative control were challenged via oral gavage (1 mL per bird) with sporulated oocysts of Eimeria species, including approximately 50,000, 10,000, and 5000 of E. acervulina, E. maxima, and E. tenella oocysts, respectively [54] on d 10 (for experiment 1) or d 14 (for experiment 2). Birds in the negative control groups were orally provided 1 mL of saline solution, producing the same management stress. Solid arrows (B) indicate the days when birds were weighed, bled, and slaughtered for lesion scoring or cecal sampling for determination of Eimeria-specific antibody titers. SRBC: sheep red blood cells; PHA-P: phytohemagglutinin-P