Article published the August 27, 2025
Growth promoting effects of zinc bacitracin, Bacillus-based probiotics and a blend of Yucca and Quillaja saponin in broilers have been well documented (Engberg et al. 2000; Cheeke, 2009; Jeong and Kim, 2014). These in-feed additives are commonly used in broiler diets but their effects at different dietary crude protein (CP) concentrations remain unclear. This study was conducted to study the effec ...
Article published the July 15, 2025
Meat and bone meal (MBM) is a valuable source of protein, calcium and available phosphorus for broiler diets (Anwar et al., 2016). The use of MBM in broiler diets at levels above 50 g/kg minimizes the need for inclusion of inorganic P, thus reducing feed cost. Potential indigestibility of protein in MBM (Kim et al., 2012) may act as a predisposing factor for necrotic enteritis (NE). Increased prod ...
Article published the July 15, 2025
Measures to improve bird performance have been sought due to the imminent phase out of in-feed antibiotics in poultry and continued demand for higher poultry feeding efficiency. Promotion of gizzard development by physical structure of feed ingredients or addition of dietary fibre is one such strategy with the hypothesis that larger ingredient particles and higher fibre enhance digestive enzyme se ...
Article published the July 14, 2025
A recent study suggests that artificial Ascardia galli infection has no effect on performance and egg quality of free-range laying hens from the point of lay until 40 weeks of age (Sharma et al., 2017). However, the lower hepatic lipid reserve of infected hens observed in the same study indicated the potential for A. galli to affect production at a later stage. In this study, serum and yolk antibo ...
Article published the June 23, 2025
Low protein diets are being investigated to reduce feed cost and address health, welfare and environmental concerns associated with feeding meat chickens excess dietary crude protein (CP). Low CP diets supplemented with only essential amino acids (AA) have failed to improve performance to that observed with standard CP diets (Dean et al., 2006). The nonessential amino acid glycine (Gly) is believe ...
Article published the November 15, 2024
I. INTRODUCTIONThe meat chicken industry is growing rapidly as a result of an increasing population, relatively low production costs and excellent marketability with regards to affordability, sustainability and minimal religious restrictions. Poultry diets with lower crude protein (CP) have generated global interest from the meat chicken industry due to the benefits concluded by published literatu ...
Article published the June 24, 2024
Copper (Cu) is a vital element involved in cellular metabolism and enzyme systems. At levels greater than nutritional requirements, dietary Cu addition enhances growth performance as a growth promoter (Pesti and Bakalii, 1996). Copper dosing at levels up to 250 mg/kg feed has been shown to improve intestinal structure and function, and alter the intestinal microbiota profile (Di Giancamillo et al. ...
Article published the March 13, 2024
Reduced protein (RP) diets have received increasing interest in poultry nutrition due to the potential benefits in feed cost and environmental footprint (Liu et al., 2021). Understanding the order of limiting amino acids (AA) in RP diets is critical to ensure requirements are met cost effectively. To date, only the first three limiting AA (including lysine [Lys], methionine [Met], and threonine [T ...
Article published the January 17, 2024
I. INTRODUCTIONFeeding the world’s projected burgeoning human population increase of 2.2 billion people by 2050 will place tremendous pressure on food security. The poultry industry is innovative and well positioned to address this problem through increased efficiency and waste reduction. Globally, 32% (by weight) of produced food − equivalent to 1.3 billion tons − is lost or was ...
Article published the December 19, 2023
An estimated 7.3 million tonnes of food waste are dumped annually in Australia, leading to substantial environmental and economic losses (Arcadis, 2019). Additionally, poultry feed represents the majority of production cost. Therefore, an experiment was designed to evaluate food waste as a feed for laying hens. A total of 150 Isa Brown laying hens at 24 weeks of age were allocated to 3 treatments ...