Research/Dietary manipulation post hatch
From Poultry Hub
Project title: Dietary manipulation post hatch
Project Leader: Paul Iji at UNE funded by Poultry CRC (Project 03-04)
Duration of Project: Now completed (1 October 2003 to 31 July 2007)
Contents |
Project overview
The project investigated two strategies of dietary manipulation of broiler chickens post-hatch. The first strategy dealt with specific carbohydrates extracted from Australian native plants and their potential prebiotic effect in broiler chickens. The second strategy examined the mechanisms by which grain processing and feed constituents affect digestive physiology and their impact on production.
Project objectives
- Investigate the use of natural bioactive compounds from Australian native plants and their effect on gut development, gut microflora and growth performance of broiler chickens; and
- Elucidate the effect of feed processing on gut development, growth performance and health of broiler chickens.
Project progress
This project has been completed and the Final Report is available from the Poultry CRC (ISBN: 1 921010 14 2).
The prebiotic effects of carbohydrates extracted from Australian native plants have been investigated in a number of experiments. Dietary inclusion of plant extracts did not improve growth performance of chickens but had a positive effect on the gut microflora with an increased number of beneficial organisms Lactobacillus spp. and a reduced number of Clostridium perfringens, the organism associated with necrotic enteritis.
Experiments investigating the effects of feed processing have shown that feeding roller-milled sorghum improved feed conversion efficiency compared to feeding hammer-milled sorghum and feeding whole sorghum seemed to improve gut development and possibly gut function as well.
