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Poster in Jan 04, 2025 12:11:03

Poultry Intestinal Health: Are We Addressing the Right Areas?

Poultry Intestinal Health: Are We Addressing the Right Areas?

Indian poultry production standards have improved by leaps and bounds in the past decades, a tribute to continuous genetic development, precise nutritional formulations, and improved management practices. However, one issue that has lately gained significant attention from producers is the contraction in profit margins experienced across the categories: Broiler, Breeder, and Layers. This calls for continuous improvements in production efficiency for profitable enterprises, and undoubtedly, the path to this improvement goes through an ‘efficient gut health’ management program. ‘Gut Health,’ a term that emerged about a decade and a half ago in the poultry landscape, today holds more significance than ever before.

In the current context, producers are facing a double whammy to sustain. On one side, the input factors, particularly the major conventional raw materials, are showing dynamic pricing trends, with associated challenges of availability and desired quality. On the other side, price realization is equally dynamic, eventually putting the producer in a tight spot. The situation becomes even more complicated due to the prevalence of subclinical infections, mycotoxin contamination, deteriorating water quality, and erratic environmental fluctuations.

Does this situation relate to the gut health of our birds? Definitely, yes. The changing trends in formulations, with higher and more diverse usage of unconventional raw materials, increased nutrient demands from birds, and the direct impact of diseases and the environment on poultry gut health, all require attention to specific areas that are impacting our birds’ gut health today. This calls for a sharp focus on the evolving challenges of poultry gut health.

Impending Challenge: Dual Threat of Necrotic Enteritis and Chronic Gut Inflammation (CGI)

Conventionally, Clostridium perfringens has been attributed to the causation of Necrotic Enteritis (NE) (primarily subclinical, causing a loss of Rs 4-5 per bird), along with Eimeria species, as the primary reason for gut-associated challenges. However, today the situation is more complicated than just NE due to the higher intensity of predisposing factors for NE, attributed to increased gut stressors. Consequently, increasing gut stressors continue to directly impact the bird by causing chronic intestinal inflammation, resulting in an additional loss of Rs 2-3 per bird. This impact of chronic intestinal inflammation is largely due to the increased demand for nutrients by birds with chronically inflamed intestines.


Inflammation is the body’s response to any tissue injury. This becomes problematic from a producer’s standpoint when the response is undesired and exceeds the required level. In fact, when this response or inflammation of the intestines becomes a regular feature, often undesirable, it is termed low-grade ‘Chronic Intestinal Inflammation.’ The response comes at the expense of about 0.27 g of ideal protein per bird per day (Sandberg, F. B. et al., 2007; Klasing, K. C., 2007) when measured in simulated models. Translating commercially, the losses could be estimated at about 60g of feed lost per broiler bird.


Undesired intestinal inflammation weakens gut integrity, aggravates dysbiosis, promotes the translocation of pathogens from the gut into the system, and importantly, puts the gut under oxidative stress, further compromising the immune function associated with the gut. See more.

Source: Email/GFMM

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