Effects of dietary supplementation of alfalfa meal on growth performance, carcass characteristics, meat and egg quality, and intestinal microbiota in Beijing-you chicken

Growth performance, carcass characteristics, meat and egg quality, and intestinal microbiota in Beijing-you chicken on diets with inclusion of fresh chicory forage

“…In agreement with our findings, plenty of studies indicated that the Firmicutes was the dominant phylum in duodenum and ileum of chickens, while caecum was inhabited mostly by the Bacteroidetes Xiao et al 2017;Zheng et al 2019). At the genus level, the Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes were primarily composed of the Lactobacillus and Bacteroides, respectively.…”

“…Various dietary strategies have been used to improve the poultry growth performance and feed efficiency, such as probiotics including Bacillus subtilis and Lactobacillus sp. Fathi et al 2018), prebiotics including fructooligosaccharides and galactooligosaccharides (Park et al 2017), forage products including alfalfa meal (Zheng et al 2019) and other natural products including green tea (Xia et al 2018). In this study, however, chickens fed diets containing chicory forage had a lower feed efficiency compared to those fed a basal diet.…”

“…In this study, the increased populations of the Bacteroides in caecum of chickens fed chicory forage diets are further indications for a chicory-induced stimulation of intestinal fermentative activity. As we suggested previously, dietary fibre in diet might stimulate the Bacteroides proliferation (Zheng et al 2019). In addition, pathogenic microbes, such as the Rikenella, were depressed because of dietary supplementation of chicory forage.…”

“…In addition, some medicinal plants were found to have prebiotic effects to modulate intestinal microbiota through favouring a quick proliferation of beneficial strains and inhibiting the growth of pathogenic microbes (Ali 2011). It is well established that a large range of forages, such as alfalfa, ryegrass, clover and grass meals, can be successfully used in poultry diets (Almeida et al 2012;Zhang et al 2013;Zheng et al 2019).…”

“…Recent advancements in molecular tools, especially for high-throughput sequencing, have enabled us to perform a comprehensive assessment of the intestinal microbiota. One of our former studies showed that dietary supplementation of alfalfa meal stimulated the proliferation of beneficial bacteria, such as the Lactobacillus and Bacteroides, and inhibited potential pathogens including the Clostridium (Zheng et al 2019). However, limited information is available regarding the metagenomic analysis of the intestinal microbiota affected by dietary chicory forage supplementation.…”