Prebiotics: An Emerging Nutritional Approach for Improving Gut Health of Livestock and Poultry

Review Article

Prebiotics: An Emerging Nutritional Approach for Improving Gut Health of Livestock and Poultry

The complex interactions between diet, intestinal mucosa and intestinal microbiota affect health status in livestock and poultry. Various approaches have been tried to exploit this relationship for achieving maximum health benefits and supplementation of prebiotics constitutes one of them. Now a days prebiotics have become news mainly as an alternative to probiotics, which are difficult to handle in foodstuffs, but whose benefits to gut health are well established. Commercially available prebiotics are mostly inulin, fructo-oligosaccharides, mannan-oligosaccharides, galacto-oligosaccharides, transgalacto-oligosaccharides, lactulose and oligochitosan, etc. Prebiotics selectively stimulate the growth of Bifidobacterium sp., Lactobacillus sp. and certain butyrate producing bacteria and suppress the growth of toxogenic Escherichia coli, Clostridium perfringens, Streptococcus sp., peptococci, bacilli, Staphylococcus sp., Salmonella enteritidis, Campylobacter sp., bacteriodaeceae, pseudomonad, yeast and mould. Dietary supplementation of prebiotics improve a plethora of gut health attributes like hindgut fermentation, gut mucosal integrity, lipid and glucose homeostasis, mineral bio-availability and immune response in livestock and poultry owing to which many feed and pharma industries have been established. Their inclusion in diet can also suppress boar taint, control faecal odour, prevent colon cancer and reduce infestation of several parasites such as Ascaris sp., Trichuris sp. and Oesophagostomum dentatum. Their satietogenic effect results from decline in ghrelin secretion which in turn regulates body weight gain in obese animals. Prebiotics may eventually replace the role of antibiotics as growth stimulants in fishery, poultry and animal husbandry sectors. Because of all these multitude of benefits, inclusion of prebiotics in basal diet should be taken into consideration while preparing formula feed for livestock and poultry.

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L. Samal and N.C. Behura, 2015. Prebiotics: An Emerging Nutritional Approach for Improving Gut Health of Livestock and Poultry. Asian Journal of Animal and Veterinary Advances, 10: 724-739.

DOI: 10.3923/ajava.2015.724.739

URL: https://scialert.net/abstract/?doi=ajava.2015.724.739

Asian Journal of Animal and Veterinary Advances

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L. Samal

N.C. Behura

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Review Article

Prebiotics: An Emerging Nutritional Approach for Improving Gut Health of Livestock and Poultry

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