Modern poultry operations have undergone major changes in practice over the last 50 years. Genetic selection for high productivity, improved rearing and changes in dietary requirements have led to increased performance standards across all farm operations. Among the livestock species, poultry sector is the fastest growing over the years with their significant contribution to total animal protein production as well as consumption. Along with this growth, the poultry industry is faced with enormous challenges to maintain the health and welfare of poultry. Moreover, since 2018 in Indonesia, the use of antibiotics as growth promoters has been banned, so the challenges in raising livestock, especially broiler chickens, are getting bigger.

Healthy gastrointestinal system is important for poultry to achieve its maximum production potential. Factors like feed, microbiota and stress from environment will influence the functionality and health of gut. Therefore, feed ingredients should be routinely evaluated to ensure that they are safe, contain correct amount of the specified nutrient, and to ensure the finished feed will optimize animal performance. Quality control in feed production is important in the success and profitability of broilers. Normally, as the ideal method of assessing the nutritive value of a feedstuff, in-vitro techniques such as chemical analysis, table values, prediction equations, and near infrared spectroscopy (NIRs) has been used widely, whilst the results are not directly comparable to in-vivo trials.

The use of animals (in-vivo) is the most valuable method to gain information on nutrient utilization and more accurate to predict bird performance. This method measures the direct animal response to variation in diet and is the best method to determine the nutritional value of feed ingredients as well as determine feed additive model and medication. However, this method is expensive, time-consuming, require dedicated facilities, and trained personnel with special skills.

Nutricell Pacific with its in-vivo tools named Gut Health Compass, provides data analysis of gut health that can be used to help feedmills and farmers in predicting gut health status of broiler chicken, thus can be use as measurement of feed quality as well. Equipped with several platform such as digital imaging tools for digestive tract scoring, NIRs analysis of gut digesta, biomarker development and microbiome analysis, this tool will provide a quantitative overview of the health status of the intestine.

On August 25-26, 2021, Nutricell participated in the Feed Quality Workshop organized by the US Soybean Export Council (USSEC), USDA. With participants from many feedmills and farms in Indonesia, this workshop reviews updates on the analysis of the quality of feed raw materials in-vitro and in-vivo. In collaboration with USSEC and the Ciawi Livestock Research Institute, Nutricell conducted the in-vivo assay and explained a technique for evaluating in-vivo feed quality, in this case based on the quality of soybean meal using the Gut Health Compass method.

The results of this study illustrate that the gut health index is directly proportional to the performance index, besides that this study proves that the use of full fat soybean did not have an impact on intestinal health and the use of palm kernel meal as a negative control reduced the intestinal health index and performance index.

For more information on Gut Health Compass, contact nutricell@nutricell.co.id or direct call to +6221-29203641/42

Reference:

Kogut M et al. 2017. Gut Health in Poultry. ISSN 1749-8848

Kallam NRK and Sejian V. 2021. Gut Health and Immunity in Improving Poultry Production. DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.95989

Mould, Fergus L. 2003. Predicting Feed Quality – Chemical Analysis and In-vitro Evaluation. Field Crops Research Vol 84, Issues 1-2, October-November 2003, Pages 31-44

Zaefarian F et al. 2021. Trends in Feed Evaluation for Poultry with Emphasis on In-Vitro Techniques. Animal Nutrition Vol 7, Issue 2, June 2021, Pages 268-281