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...

Experiments were conducted to determine the digestible lysine (DLys) requirement of Liuzhou Mahua broilers from 1 to 21 d and from 22 to 42 d of age. Monofactorial design was adopted in this study. 1200 one-day-old healthy broiler chicks were divided randomly and evenly into five treatments, and were all fed with isoenergetic diet (with ME of 3.0 Mcal/kg) but with graded levels of DLys: 1.22%, ...

Bacterial chondronecrosis with osteomyelitis (BCO) and turkey osteomyelitis complex (TOC) are characterized by bacterial infection and necrotic degeneration within the tibiae and femora. Stress and immunosuppression have been implicated in the pathogenesis of BCO and TOC. Immunosuppressive doses of dexamethasone (DEX) trigger high incidences of TOC in turkey poults. The present study was conduc...

BACKGROUND Enterococcus cecorum is considered as an emerging pathogen in poultry and can cause substantial losses in broiler flocks. Femoral head necrosis and spondylitis were described as the main pathological changes in infected chickens. Nevertheless, little is known about the pathogenesis of Enterococcus cecorum infection in broilers. This report shows for the first time the whole course of...

This study was aimed to determine the alkaline phosphatase activity following time course (days) in the intestine of broilers. We used a sample of 54 subjects of broilers from hatching period to 56th day of age. Our finding showed a significant increase in the alkaline phosphatase activity at various levels in the different intestinal segments during the first two weeks of life and then decreas...

Two hundred and forty male Cobb broilers were used to study the reasons of causing ascites. The results showed that cold ambient temperature could induce ascites (33.89% vs. 2.50%) and significantly increase triiodothyronine (T3), but reduce thyroxine (T4) concentrations in plasma (p<0.05). The ascitic broilers had high concentrations of aldosterone and K , but low concentrations of T3 and T4 i...

P-glycoprotein (P-gp) expression determines the absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion of many drugs in the body. Also, up-regulation of P-gp acts as a defense mechanism against acute inflammation. This study examined expression levels of abcb1 mRNA and localization of P-gp protein in the liver, kidney, duodenum, jejunum and ileum in healthy and E. coli infected broilers by real tim...

Among chicken strains, broilers are prone to pulmonary hypertension, whereas Leghorns are not. Relaxations to endothelium-dependent (ACh, A23187) and endothelium-independent [sodium nitroprusside (SNP), papaverine (PPV)] vasodilators were compared in preconstricted pulmonary artery (PA) rings from these chicken strains. ACh (10-7, 10-6, and 10-5 M)- and A23187 (10-6 and 10-5.5 M)-induced relaxa...

An experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of phytase transgenic corn (PTC) on intestinal microflora, and the fate of transgenic DNA and protein in the digesta and tissues of broilers. A total of 160 1-day-old Arbor Acres commercial male broilers were randomly assigned to 20 cages (8 chicks per cage) with 10 cages (replicates) for each treatment. Birds were fed with a diet containing...

The apparent ileal digestibility of amino acids in 7 feed ingredients was determined using broilers, layers, and roosters. The ingredients included 3 cereals (wheat, sorghum, and corn), 3 oilseed meals (canola, cottonseed, and soybean meals), and 1 animal protein meal (meat and bone meal). Dietary protein in the assay diets was supplied solely by the test ingredient. All diets contained 20 g/kg...