Research/Understanding gut function and gut health of chickens
From Poultry Hub
Project Title: Understanding gut function and gut health of chickens
Project Leaders: Bob Hughes and Mark Geier at SARDI funded by Poultry CRC (Project 05-02)
Duration of Project: 1 September 2005 to 31 March 2009
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Project overview
This project addresses one of the Poultry CRC’s primary objectives; sustainable production of chicken meat without reliance on antibiotics. We are utilising the wide range of expertise within the CRC to provide an integrated picture of how nutrition influences bird health and production, intestinal structure and function, gut mucosal immunity and the intestinal microbiota. This knowledge can then be applied to identify compounds that can maintain bird performance in the absence of antibiotics.
Under normal commercial conditions, intensively housed broilers are metabolically stressed periodically and this has a significant impact on health and disease. Vaccination and in-feed antibiotics have been the mainstays of industry to control a range of economically important diseases. As a result of this project we will gain greater understanding of how in-feed antibiotics improve broiler performance, and attempt to identify natural alternatives to in-feed antibiotics which convey similar effects.
Project objectives
- Provide an integrated picture of the complex interactions amongst nutrition, the commensal bacteria of the gastrointestinal tract, mucosal immunity, gut structure and function, and corresponding production efficiency and bird health.
Project progress
Five broiler nutrition experiments have been performed. A scoping experiment was conducted which indicated that the sex of the chicken affected broiler performance and aspects of the mucosal immune system. Larger broiler energy metabolism experiments were conducted to compare the effects of feed supplemented with mannanoligosaccharide, fructooligosaccharide, omega-3 PUFA, or lactoferrin to feed with and without antibiotics. These feed additives were selected based on their capacity to influence the intestinal microbiota, mucosal immune status, gut structure and gut function. A final experiment was performed to assess the capacity for an organic acid product to reduce the onset and severity of necrotic enteritis.
The addition of these compounds influenced the intestinal microbiota and the mucosal immune system to varying degrees. We also demonstrated that omega-3 PUFA supplementation influenced the fatty acid distribution in chicken meat and plasma. Interestingly, in experiments on healthy birds, it was observed that the addition of these compounds did not alter bird growth and performance efficiency compared to feed with and without antibiotics. Further assessment of the impact of lactoferrin and organic acids are continuing.
