Influence of the use of alternative additives instead of antimicrobials on the performance, intestinal morphology and immunity of broilers

Author(s)

Aryana Duckur Nunes

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Pirassununga.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Medicina Veterinária e Zootecnia (FMVZ/SBD)
• Defense date: 2008-02-26

Examining board members

Ricardo de Albuquerque; Antonio Carlos Paulillo; Messias Alves da Trindade Neto

• Advisor: Ricardo de Albuquerque

Abstract

Due to the public health concerning with the use of antimicrobials as growth promoters in livestock, the number of researches of alternative strategies for antimicrobials has increased. Some researches about the use of prebiotics and probiotics as additives have demonstrated that those promote the beneficial modulation of the intestinal microbiota and have immunomodulatory effects which would allow decreasing of immunological stress. So, this study aimed to verify the influence of a prebiotic and of a probiotic on the performance, morphology intestinal and parameters of broilers immunity, comparing them with an antibiotic and a control group. In this experiment, 960 chicks were used and bread up to 42 days-old on litter previously used. The assignment was completely randomized, with 4 treatments: Basal diet (BS) with antibiotic, BS with prebiotic, BS with probiotic and control (only BS); with eight repetitions for each treatment. Concerning to the performance and taking into account the whole breeding period (42 days), the alternative additives groups did not present any effect on the weight gain (WG), feed intake (FI) and mortality. The feed conversion (FC) of the alternative additives groups was similar to that of the antibiotic one, but they had no significant difference from the control. Relatively to the immunity, the additives did not present any effect on the majority of the parameters evaluated in this work. However, for thymus relative weight and phagocytosis index, the prebiotic was shown to have some influence on. Moreover, both additives showed, although just numerically, a better response for vaccination against Newcastle disease than the others for 42 days-old broilers. Finally, it was not possible to observe any beneficial effects of the alternative additives on the broilers intestinal morphology. It is important to emphasize that several factors may influence the effects of those additives, which allow obtaining inconclusive, and even contradictory, results. Taking into account this fact and the results obtained in this work, one concludes that the essays with alternative additives must go on, since there have been evidences of their possible beneficial effects on animal production. (AU)