Direct fed microbials and probiotics are used to promote health in livestock and poultry; however, their mechanism of action is still poorly understood. We previously reported that direct fed microbial supplementation in young broilers reduced ileal respiration without changing whole-body energy expenditure. The current studies were conducted to further investigate the effects of a direct fed m...

The trial was conducted to evaluate the effects of sea buckthorn leaves (SBL) on meat flavor in broilers during heat stress. A total 360 one-day-old Arbor Acre (AA) broilers (male) were randomly allotted to 4 treatments with 6 replicates pens pretreatment and 15 birds per pen. The control group was fed a basal diet, the experimental group I, II and III were fed the basal diet supplemented with ...

An experiment on Lohmann male broilers was conducted to evaluate the effect of different energy and protein levels on broiler performance and plasma concentrations of growth hormone (GH), thyroxine (T4), and triiodothyronine (T3). 600 day-old broilers were fed on either 2800(low-energy) or 3200(high-energy) Kcal ME/Kg diets with different protein levels during three periods of starter, grower a...

The effect of hatch location and diet density on the prevalence of footpad dermatitis and growth performance in broiler chickens was studied. Broilers (Ross 308), incubated at 2 different hatch locations but originating from the same parent stock, were subjected to 2 feeding programs differing in energy content (2,750 vs. 2,950, 2,850 vs. 3,050, 2,900 vs. 3,100, and 2,900 vs. 3,100 kcal/kg for ...

This 42-day experiment was undertaken to compare the nutritional value of insect-protected corn event MON810 (YieldGard) and YieldGard x herbicide-tolerant corn event GA21 (Roundup Ready) to their nontransgenic controls as well as four different commercial reference corns, when fed to growing Cobb x Cobb broilers. A randomized complete block design was used, and each treatment was replicated wi...

Increased dietary protein intake rapidly (3 h) decreases malic enzyme and increases hepatic histidase mRNA expression. Experiments were conducted to determine the role that individual dispensable amino acids and nonprotein N sources might have in regulating the activity of these enzymes and to determine if the addition of a N supplement to a practical broiler diet during the entire rearing peri...

A study was conducted to determine effects of bird age at slaughter, feed withdrawal, and transportation on levels of coliforms, Campylobacter, Escherichia coli, and Salmonella on carcasses before and after immersion chilling. Broilers were processed at 42, 49, and 56 d of age after a 12-h feed withdrawal period or a 0-h feed withdrawal period (full fed). At each age, broilers were processed fr...

Two independent experiments were conducted with male Cobb × Cobb 500 broilers to determine the optimal valine-to-digestible-lysine ratio for broiler development. We conducted a randomized block experiment with 7 treatments, each with 8 replicates of 25 starter birds (8 to 21 d of age) and 20 finisher (30 to 43 d of age) birds. To prevent any excess of digestible lysine, 93% of the recommended l...

Feed ingredient costs have been a concern to the U.S. broiler industry. Some integrated operations have reduced apparent metabolizable energy (AMEn ) values to decrease live production costs. Our laboratory has previously determined that 36 to 47 d feed conversion and caloric conversion were optimized with broilers fed diets formulated at 3,200 kcal/ kg. Finishing broilers may respond to diets ...

An experiment with 288 male (Ross 308) 1-d-old broilers was conducted to test the hypothesis that a coarse diet supplemented with butyric acid (BA) and fermentable carbohydrates (FC) improves performance of broilers with a poorly digestible protein source. The interaction effects of diet structure (fine or coarse), FC supplementation (with or without), and BA supplementation (with or without) i...