Coccidiosis is one of the greatest challenges for broiler production in Australia, particularly as there is a push to ban antibiotic growth promotants and coccidiostats. The economic impact of coccidiosis worldwide is estimated at approximately $14.5 billion USD (Blake et al., 2021). Vaccines are available, but can be expensive and birds may experience depressed performance. Additionally, newly identified strains are not mitigated with the current vaccines available. Therefore, this project was designed to explore nutritional strategies to reduce the impact of coccidiosis burden within industry.
The project aimed to determine if the nutritional strategies of post-pellet whole wheat, xylo-oligosaccharides, high fat, high carbohydrate, supplementation of threonine and branched-chain amino acids and short-chain fatty acid inclusions may reduce the severity of the coccidiosis challenge in broilers, in comparison to a ground grain, unchallenged negative control and challenged positive control diets.
As xylo-oligosaccharide, high carbohydrate and short-chain fatty acid inclusion are the most effective nutritional strategies explored in this project, determining the effects of dietary xylo-oligosaccharide, carbohydrate and short-chain fatty acid levels on the growth performance and gut health of broilers during coccidiosis challenge may be worthwhile for further studies and may help to expand the impacts of this study.
For further information about this project please contact the lead researcher Dr Amy Moss.
Email: amoss22@une.edu.au
