Fermented liquid or acidified feed can help to improve Salmonella status of chickens
Take Home Message: To reduce the number of Salmonella-shedding chickens feed acidified feed or fermented liquid feed containing lactobacillus.
The proportion of S. typhimurium-shedding chickens was decreased significantly in both chickens fed fermented liquid feed and acidified feed. Some positive news for all poultry producers from the University of Plymouth’s Soumela Savvidou.
“Providing lactic acid bacteria to poultry through fermented feed could be better than through water,” said Ms Savvidou told delegates at the British Society of Animal Science’s annual conference.
“It appears that there is a synergistic effect of both the high numbers of lactobacilli and their production of lactic acid, which reduces the pH in the gastrointestinal tract of the chicken, on the control of Salmonella status of chickens,” she added.
Consumption of poultry meat is associated with human Salmonella infections and one way to control the presence of these bacteria in broiler flocks is to make chickens less susceptible to colonisation.
Ms Savvidou and her team set out to assess a strain identified as Lb. salivarius, which has been isolated from the chicken gut and has been selected for its probiotic and fermentation properties and for its efficacy in reducing the shedding of Salmonella typhimurium in poultry.
They took newly hatched chicks from a pathogen free White Leghorn flock and housed them in negative pressure isolators. A total of 68 hatchlings were randomly divided into four groups of 17 birds.
One group was provided with a daily dose of 107cfu/ml of Lb. salivarius, delivered via drinking water, from day one of age. The second group was provided with 109 cfu/gr of Lb. salivarius, delivered in fermented liquid feed. The third group was provided with feed acidified with 30.3 ml of lactic acid/kg of wet feed from day one of age and the fourth group was the control.
Swabs were taken from 10 tagged birds per group at least twice a week for six weeks prior to and after challenge to determine the total lactobacilli counts and the shedding of Salmonella.
“And we found that the mean lactobacilli counts of the fermented feed treatment at the end of the experiment were significantly higher than the three other groups,” said Ms Savvidou.
“The percentage of the days that the 10 birds per group were free of Salmonella was 51% for the group fed fermented feed which was significantly higher than the group of the acidified feed, which had 23% of Salmonella negative days. The group provided Lb. salivarius via water had 19% of Salmonella negative days, and the control had 8% of Salmonella negative days,” she added.
To view proceedings of all summaries presented at the Annual Conference 2009 http://www.bsas.org.uk/Publications/Annual_Conference_Proceedings/ To view all Powerpoint presentations http://www.bsas.org.uk/Members_Area/ For further information contact: BSAS on 0131 445 4508 or bsas@sac.ac.uk
