Abstract
Food safety and quality have been a significant and crucial predicament recently. In poultry, development of novel antimicrobial strategies for drug-resistant pathogens is desired. Here, Phytogenic Feed Additives (PFA) were administered in chicken diet to decipher their impact on animal performance and gut microbiota composition. One-hundred-fiftyday-old chicks were randomly divided into three treatment groups with five replicates/group as (i) Control diets (CON); (ii) Control diets + 0.01% w/v enramycin (antibiotic growth promoter, AB); (iii) Control diets + 3% w/v blend of garlic, peppermint, cinnamon, black cumin, and green tea (phytogenic feed additives, PFA). Non-significant differences for body weight gain and feed intake (p>0.05) were found between AB and PFA groups. Quantitative bacterial analysis of chicken gut revealed supplementation of PFA significantly increased (p<0.05) beneficial bacterial (Lactobacillus spp. and Enterococcus spp.) and reduced (p<0.05) pathogenic bacterial (E. coli and Campylobacter spp.) population versus AB and CON group. Overall, statistical profiling of gut bacteria depicted numerically increased beneficial bacteria in PFA group (79%) followed by AB (72%) and CON (65%) in chicken gut. In conclusion, due to increased animal performance and maintained balanced gut microflora tested phytogenic feed additives of this study might be regarded as potential alternatives to existing antibiotics in poultry for better food animal production

ZUBIA RASHID, ZULFIQAR ALI MIRANI, SITWAT ZEHRA, SYED MUDDASSAR HUSSAIN GILANI, ARIF ALI CHISHTI, ABID AZHAR, SADDIA GALANI. (2019) Dietary inclusion of phytogenic feed additives (PFA) as an alternative to in-feed antibiotics modulating gut microbial dynamics in broiler chicken, Biologia – Journal of Biological Society of Pakistan, Volume 65 (II), Issue 2.
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