How much do you know about the five benefits of adding probiotics to feed?
Adding Probiotic Blend Powder to the feed can keep the animal’s intestinal tract at a healthy level, relieve the stress caused by various reasons, improve the meat quality of the animal, strengthen the microbial metabolic activity in the animal’s digestive tract, and reduce the production of Excretion of malodorous substances, etc.
People usually drink yogurt to regulate intestinal flora to help digestion and absorption, and animals also need probiotics to help them digest feed and absorb sufficient nutrients from it. Probiotics are called microbial feed additives in animal husbandry . There are five main benefits of probiotics added to feed through research.
1. Maintain the intestinal health of animals
Mechanisms by which probiotics resist infection by pathogenic microorganisms include production of organic acids, hydrogen peroxide or antibacterial substances, competition for nutrients or binding sites, antitoxin effects, and stimulation of the immune system. Adding probiotics to the diet can reduce the probability of diarrhea in weaned piglets, and increase the number of lactic acid bacteria and the content of organic acids in the intestine, thereby reducing the colonization of E. coli. Adding yeast to the diet of weaned piglets can significantly increase the macrophages of the intestinal mucosa and enhance the resistance of piglets to bacterial infection. In addition, probiotics can also promote the increase of villous height and villi height/crypt depth in the intestinal tract of livestock and poultry, so as to keep the intestinal tract healthy, promote the digestion and absorption of nutrients, and improve the feed conversion efficiency. And it can alleviate intestinal damage and digestive disorders caused by stress in weaned piglets, promote the recovery of small intestinal mucosal structure, increase the height of small intestinal villi and depth of crypts, reduce the thickness of intestinal mucus layer and improve the digestion of nutrients absorb. In addition, adding probiotics can also improve feed intake, ileal digestibility and feed conversion rate, and improve growth performance at 5 weeks after weaning.
2. Relieve adverse stress
Heat stress is currently one of the main environmental factors affecting animal performance. Excessively high temperature will lead to changes and disturbances in the physiological functions of animals, manifested as decreased feed intake, slow growth, and decreased resistance. In severe cases, the mortality rate will increase, causing greater economic losses to farmers. Probiotics can maintain the balance of intestinal flora in broilers, thereby affecting the activities of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal and hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid axes, reducing the level of adrenal cortisol to reduce inflammatory responses, and enhancing the body’s humoral immunity. The research results show that heat stress destroys the intestinal mucosal structure of laying hens and reduces the level of intestinal mucosal immunity. Adding 1×10^7 viable bacteria units of Bacillus licheniformis per kilogram of diet can significantly improve the intestinal mucosal structure under heat stress conditions. The mucosal structure of the tract, maintain the mucosal immune response, and overcome the decline in feed intake and egg production rate of laying hens. In addition, adding probiotics to the diet can reduce the oxidative damage of broilers and alleviate the adverse effects of heat stress on broilers.
3. Improve the environment of the livestock house
Probiotics strengthen the metabolic activities of microorganisms in the digestive tract of animals, reduce the foul smell of excrement and increase the number of microorganisms that decompose feces, and strengthen the decomposition of feces in livestock houses, so probiotics can improve the environment of livestock houses.
4. Improve the meat quality of livestock and poultry
Probiotics can improve the quality of livestock and poultry meat by adjusting the composition of fatty acids and cholesterol content. Adding probiotics to the diet can increase the ratio of unsaturated fatty acids to saturated fatty acids in the leg muscles and breast muscles of broilers, reduce the content of cholesterol and triglycerides in egg yolks of laying hens and excrete them with feces. The addition of Bacillus licheniformis to the diet can also affect egg shell thickness and yolk color.
5. Alternative to Antibiotics
Probiotics maintain intestinal health and improve intestinal function through nutritional regulation, and are a very potential substitute for antibiotics. The addition of lactic acid bacteria in the diet can reduce the activity of urease in the small intestine content, and the effect of weight gain in broilers is better than that of adding oxytetracycline. At present, some microbial feed additives have shown great potential to replace antibiotics in feed.
Adding probiotics to feed is beneficial and harmless, so farmers can carefully check whether the ingredient list contains this ingredient when purchasing feed. At the same time, in-depth research is carried out on probiotics, so that they can play the role of antibiotics in the breeding process.
