Effects of corn particle size on growth performance, gastrointestinal development, carcass indices and intestinal microbiota of broilers

This experiment was conducted to investi-gate the effects of different corn particle sizes on growth per-formance, gastrointestinal development, carcass processing yields and intestinal microbiota of caged broilers. One-day -old Ross 308 broilers were randomly divided into 8 treat-ments with 10 replicates per treatment and 30 birds per rep-licate pen. The experiment lasted 37 d. Feed and water were provided ad libitum. The results showed as follows: birds fed diets with the FG corn between d 1 and 13 and CG corn between d14 to 37 had increased body weight, daily gain, and feed intake (P < 0.05). Birds fed diets with CG corn between d 24 to 37 had a heavier relative weight of gizzard at d 38 (P < 0.05). Birds fed diets with FG corn from d 1 to 13 and the CG corn from d 14 to 37 had a higher carcass yield and a relative thigh weight at d 38 (P < 0.05). The intestinal microbiota was significantly affected by different corn particle sizes. The relative abundance of Lactobacilla-ceae was significantly decreased, whereas that of Peptos-treptococcaceae was increased (P < 0.05) in birds fed with the CG corn between d1 to 37. The relative abundance of Acinetobacter was significantly increased in birds fed the FG corn between d1 to 37 (P < 0.05). In conclusion, the use of FG corn in the starter phase and CG corn in the grower and finisher phases was beneficial to growth performance, gastrointestinal development and intestinal microbial structure of broilers reared in cages.

Automated summary

This experiment investigated the effects of different corn particle sizes on the growth performance, gastrointestinal development, carcass processing yields, and intestinal microbiota of caged broilers. The results showed that feeding broilers with finely ground corn in the starter phase and coarsely ground corn in the grower and finisher phases improved their body weight, daily gain, feed intake, gizzard weight, carcass yield, and relative thigh weight. The intestinal microbiota was also affected, with changes in the relative abundance of specific bacterial families.