Michael Bedford

Reviews made on the impact of intermittent lighting (IL) on broiler performance (Buyse et al., 1996; Rodrigues and Choct, 2017) attest to the consistency of such lighting programs in achieving better feed conversion rates. So far, no research has been conducted to assess the impact of IL on the susceptibility to and recovery from infectious diseases. We hypothesized that an IL program would increa ...

I. INTRODUCTIONMicrobial enzymes are now routinely used in broiler chicken diets to reduce the effects of antinutritive factors (ANF) in feed and/or improve the digestion of nutrients (Bedford, 2011). There is a suite of enzymes that target ANF such as non-starch polysaccharides (NSP) and phytic acid as well as products which improve the digestion of nutrients such as protein and minerals. The maj ...

IntroductionInert digestibility index markers are the anchor of many feeding trials designed to analyse nutrient utilisation and amino acid digestibility along the gastrointestinal tract of animals. Marker use is widely accepted as a method less laborious than total tract retention.Additionally, it enables the determination of digestibility along intestinal sections in ruminant and non-ruminant an ...

I. INTRODUCTIONExogenous enzymes are susceptible to denature when exposed to low-pH conditions, normally prevailing in the gastric phase. Hence, resistance to low-pH is considered one of the key criterion for the suitability of commercial phytase enzymes for animal feed application. The pH-stability is assessed in-vitro by measuring the recovery of enzyme activity after exposing enzyme protein to ...

Xylo-oligosaccharides (XOS) are xylose-based oligomers, which have been described to affect the gut microflora, and gut function in chickens (Zhou et al., 2021). This, in turn, may have an impact on intestinal epithelial cell turnover, which accounts for a significant part of the energy of maintenance required by the gastrointestinal tract. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of dieta ...

Coccidiosis is a disease with substantial economic impact (Muthamilselvan et al., 2016), particularly due to the push to ban anticoccidials. Vaccines are available but can be expensive, and are often implemented for free range and breeder flocks only. Thus, it is imperative to find effective nutritional alternatives to reduce the impact of coccidiosis on broiler chickens. The aim of this experimen ...

Long-term feeding of dietary fibre (DF) has been reported to cause erosion of the epithelial cell layer resulting in mucosal damage with a decrease in villus height in the small intestine (Iji et al., 2001). This project studied the long-term effects of low and high levels of soluble DF on gut physiology by comparing transcriptome in the jejunum between groups. We hypothesized that soluble DF woul ...