Effects of dietary probiotic supplementation on ileal digestibility of nutrients and growth performance in 1-to 42-day-old broilers

This study was conducted to determine the effects of dietary probiotic supplementation on the ileal digestibilities of nutrients and growth performance in broilers. Two thousand, eight hundred and eighty male broiler chickens at 1 day of age were randomly allotted to eight treatment groups and fed for 6 weeks the maize-soybean meal-based diets containing 0, 0.2, 0.4 or 0.6% AgiPro A100 (R) (a probiotic) and 0 or 6ppm flavomycin (an antibiotic). This well-established antibiotic was used as a positive control for the efficacy of AgiPro A100 (R). Dietary supplementation with either the probiotic or the antibiotic alone did not affect (P > 0.05) feed intake or average daily gain (ADG) of broilers between days 1 and 42 of life. However, there was a significant antibiotic x probiotic interaction effect (P < 0.05) in increasing ADG during the entire experimental period. Notably, dietary supplementation with the probiotic or the antibiotic consistently improved (P < 0.05) the ileal digestibilities of crude protein and most amino acids in 21- and 42-day-old chickens. Supplementing the probiotic to broiler diets also improved (P < 0.05) the ileal digestibilitics of dry matter, energy, calcium and phosphate in the birds. Collectively, these results indicated that AgiPro A100 (R) is an effective alternative to flavomycin in chicken production. (C) 2007 Society of Chemical Industry.