Digestibility – the link between gut integrity, performance and health

Appropriate feed efficiency is key to profitability and sustainability in animal production. Feed efficiency is largely determined by digestibility and this is ultimately linked to the integrity of the digestive tract.

Gut integrity determines digestibility

Maintaining gut integrity and absorption capacity is a prerequisite for optimum feed efficiency and animal health. Suboptimal digestibility as a consequence of compromised gut integrity results in an overgrowth of intestinal microbes. These microbes utilize undigested feed compounds as a substrate for growth which further shifts the gut microbiota towards an undesired composition.

The body reacts with an immune response, including the synthesis of cytokines to reinforce and maintain inflammation. Therefore, digestive disorders including diarrhea are often facilitated by poor gut integrity and suboptimal digestibility.

Phytobiotics’ nutritional recommendations for optimal digestibility

Supporting intestinal integrity:

Digestive capacity is compromised by inflammatory processes, reducing feed efficiency and increasing the risk of secondary infections. Regulating inflammation helps maintain gut integrity, mucosal functionality and therefore nutrient digestibility. Plant-derived isoquinoline alkaloids have shown anti-inflammatory effects in vitro (Chaturvedi et al., 1997) and in vivo (Khadem et al., 2014) and enhance digestibility (Steiner et al., 2016).

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Break-down of non-digestible feed ingredients:

The above approach represents a fundamental tool to increase nutrient digestibility. In addition, the use of non starch polysaccharide (NSP)-degrading enzymes (e.g. xylanase or β-glucanase) and phytase is recommended as a standard practice to enhance substrate-specific nutrient availability in diets for nonruminants.

Increasing digestibility with Sangrovit®

Supplementation of diets with Sangrovit® increased apparent ileal digestibility coefficients (Fig. 1) and growth performance (Fig. 2) in post-weaning pigs (Free University of Berlin, 2015; GIS: SE150288).

Apparent ileal digestibility of weaning piglets (66 d of age)

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Fig. 1: Significantly improved crude protein and phosphorus digestibility with Sangrovit® Extra (7 pigs/treatment). a,b p < 0.05

Overall growth performance of weaning piglets (25–66 d of age)

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Fig. 2: Sangrovit® Extra has a dose-dependent effect on average daily gain and FCR and improves FCR significantly compared to the control (14 pigs/treatment). a,b,c p < 0.05

Take-home messages

Appropriate gut integrity is a prerequisite for high nutrient digestibility.
Adequate digestibility determines feed efficiency, stabilizes animal health and reduces the risk of secondary infections.
Sangrovit® increases digestibility, resulting in improved feed efficiency and performance.