Why use prebiotics and probiotics in poultry brooding?

[Temi Cole]

Poultry farming profitability depends largely on allowing your flocks to reach genetic potential – in meat production with broilers and egg production with layers.

But this is really a result of nutritional support.

If the birds eat enough of the right food with the right nutritional content, theny their bodies will respond accordingly and developing as planned.

But feed compounds are sometimes not enough. In fact, it is often advised that nutraceuticals be used to supplement nutritional intake.

But even before looking at supplements, it pays dividends for you as a poultry farmer to understand poultry physiology.

Why?

Because how the birds’ bodies will respond to age, environmental stressors and nutritional compounds dictates what they require to hit their peak performance. And without understanding this physiological response, we are blindly acting on the birds’ behalf, which in many cases will be detrimental to their development, therefore adversely affecting our profits.

One such focus should be on early gut development.

Why?

The gut plays a rate-determining role in nutritional uptake.

It is the organ responsible for absorbing nutritional substrate that is digested by the bird.

Poor gut condition leads to poor nutritional uptake. This leads to poor production performance and sub-optimal profits or even financial loss.

And the early days of development in the brooder are the most influential in setting the right trajectory for the birds’ future ability to adequately absorb nutritional value for their feed.

In this process fo gut development, prebiotics and probiotics play an important part.

Probiotics are ‘good bacteria’ that being present in the gut of the bird, will give rise to beneficial health and assistance with nutritional absorption.

Prebiotics are the nutritional substances that cause the probiotics or ‘good bacteria’ to thrive.

If both prebiotics and probiotics are present in your flocks’ diet from the earliest brooding stages, then you are setting up your flock for future performance success. Allowing their guts to be colonised by ‘good bacteria’ from the start and assisting maximum gut absorption from the first few days of life.

This all has compounding benefit for the whole breeding cycle.

What is your experience with probiotics and prebiotics?
Do you currently use them in your breeding cycle and nutritional program for brooders?
Do you have successes for failures to share?

Comment below…

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