Specific Establishment of Lactobacilli in the Digestive Tract of Germ‐Free Chickens

Abstract

Establishment of lactobacilli in the digestive tract of germ-free chicks was studied using the organisms isolated from chickens, human infants and sour milk and those received from the American Type Culture Collection. In the case of monocontamination, intestinal lactobacilli such as Lactobacillus acidophilus, L. salivarius and L. It was shown that lactobacilli were predominant in the digestive tract of chickens [11,15], and the lactobacillus flora was composed mainly of Lactobacillus acidophilus, L. salivarius and L. fermenti but rarely included other species [7]. Furthermore, the biotype of L. acidophilus from the chicken and the human showed a considerable difference [7].In the present studies, monocontamination and dicontamination of germ-free chicks with bacteria were attempted to shed light on the problems of why Lactobacillus species such as L. helveticus, L. jugurti, L. brevis, L. plantarum and L. casei are absent from the gut of chickens [7] and why the biotype I of L. acidophilus is rarely found in the gut of chickens [7]. It was expected that the monocontamination would determine whether or not chickens reject the colonization of the above species and L. acidophilus biotype I, and the dicontamination would determine whether or not an antagonistic activity of the indigenous microflora in the gut of chickens result in 1 Present address:

Antibacterial Activity of Probiotic Bacteria Isolated From Broiler Feces and Commercial Strains

“…Recent studies have shown that Lactobacillus salivarius strains isolated from chicken gut could produce bacteriocins with antagonistic activity against Gram-positive bacteria (25). Morishita et al demonstrated that lactic acid bacteria are more effective for poultry when they have chicken origin (26). Therefore, administration of locally isolated strains will improve digestive gut micro flora as well as combat pathogen infection among birds.…”

Feeding <i>Lactobacilli</i> as probiotic and proportion of <i>Escherichia coli</i> in the intestine of calves

“…It does suggest that the Lactobacilli in the developing intestinal flora exert a controlling effect on coliform bacteria. Several investigators observed increases in numbers of Lactobacilli accompanied by a decrease in coliforms after oral administration of L. acidophilus (Buchanan and Gibbons 1974;Fuller, 1973;Gilliland andSpeck, 1977 andMorishita et al, 1971). Several reports indicated greater declines in numbers of coliforms after feeding L. acidopbilus to humans (Muralidhara et al 1977;Speck, 1976).…”

Microorganisms Responsible for Controlling the Populations of Escherichia coli and Enterococcus and the Consistency of Cecal Contents in the Chicken

“…The inocula prepared were administered in 1-ml amounts to gnotobiotic chickens in the manner described in a previous paper [13].…”

“…The cecal contents were obtained from chickens sacrificed for examination at the age of about 4 weeks and diluted serially in tenfold steps with the diluent mentioned above. The diluted samples were spread on various agar media prepared by the procedures of Mitsuoka et al [12], and cultured by the methods described previously [13]. The bacterial count per gram of specimen was estimated from the colony count on each agar medium.…”

“…Morishita et al [13,14] reported that the populations of Escherichia coli and Streptococcus faecalis var. liquefaciens were much larger in the cecal of mono-associated and di-associated chickens than in that of conventional birds.…”