Abstract
Simple SummaryFor several years, antibiotic growth promoters (AGPs) have been used in poultry production; however, with the recent ban on the use of AGPs, several alternatives have been evaluated. In the present work, we evaluated the use of β-mannanases and bacteriophages as an alternative to AGPs. This study demonstrates that supplementation with β-mannanases, bacteriophages, or a mix of these two does not affect the productive performance in broilers fed corn–soybean meal. The mixture of β-mannanases and bacteriophages promoted the abundance of beneficial microorganisms in the cecum. These preliminary results suggest that β-mannanases and bacteriophages have potential as alternatives to AGPs in poultry production.This study was conducted to evaluate the productive performance, intestinal health, and description of the cecum microbiota in broilers supplemented with β-mannanases (MNs) and bacteriophages (BPs). Six hundred one-day-old broilers were divided into four groups and fed one of the following diets: CON—corn–soybean meal + 10 ppm enramycin (ENR); MN: CON + 500 ppm MN; BP: CON + 500 ppm BP; MN + BP: BP + 500 ppm MN. The BP and MN factors showed similar performances to ENR. MN improved the concentration of IgA in the jejunum at 35 days of age. The morphometric index (IM) of the thymus increased by adding MN, while BP increased the liver and thymus IM. The histological analysis showed that BP and MN improved the intestinal morphology. MN + BP showed a tendency to decrease the abundance of Proteobacteria and increase the abundance of Bacteroidetes, indicating better microbiota function. In conclusion, our results demonstrate that the combination of MN + BP has potential in poultry nutrition; however, we highly recommend further experiments to confirm this hypothesis.
Highlights
Antibiotic growth promoters (AGPs) have been utilized as a part of regular practice in the poultry industry to improve performance and prevent disease [1]
The use of growth factors in poultry has been a common practice to increase productivity and efficiency; in recent years due to the growing concern of the development of microbial resistance, its use is under regulation [34,35]. New strategies, such as feed enzymes and bacteriophage mixes, have been evaluated as an alternative to antibiotic growth promoters; it has become a crucial challenge in the poultry industry to elucidate their mode of action
Even though we did not observe differences in the growth performance between treatments, our results suggest that the bacteriophage mix, β-mannanases, or a combination of these could be used as an alternative to growth factors
Summary
Antibiotic growth promoters (AGPs) have been utilized as a part of regular practice in the poultry industry to improve performance and prevent disease [1]. The integrity of the intestine, along with the complex and diverse intestinal microbiota, has an important role in the absorption of nutrients, immune system development, and pathogen inhibition [2] Factors, such as diet [3,4], age [5,6,7], health [8,9], environment [10], and feed additives, such as AGPs [11,12], have direct effects on the both the integrity and the microbiota in the gastrointestinal tract of metazoans. Even though the use of AGPs improves weight gain and feed efficiency [12], it has been reported to cause a decrease in the population of several bacterial species, allowing the proliferation of antibiotic-resistant species that could affect the host and consumer health [11,13]. The use of enzymes, such as β-mannanases, that have the capacity to hydrolyze antinutritional factors in feed grains, such as galactomannans, improves body weight gain and the feed conversion ratio [20,21]
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