Dietary encapsulated essential oils and organic acids mixture improves gut health in broiler chickens challenged with necrotic enteritis.

BACKGROUND

The poultry industry is in need of effective antibiotic alternatives to control outbreaks of necrotic enteritis (NE) due to . In the present study, we investigated the effects of dietary supplementation with a blend of encapsulated essential oils and organic acids (BLJ) on growth performance and gut health using a coinfection model of NE in broiler chickens.

METHODS

Two hundred and eighty-eight one-day-old male Arbor Acres broiler chicks were randomly assigned using a 2 × 2 factorial design into two groups fed either 0 or 500 mg/kg dietary BLJ and co-challenged (or not challenged for the control) with spp./.

RESULTS

Infected birds fed the BLJ-supplemented diet exhibited an improved feed conversion ratio throughout the trial ( < 0.01), a higher villus height and villus height/crypt depth ratio, and reduced intestinal counts, liver carriage, gut lesion scores and serum fluorescein isothiocyanate dextran (FITC-D) concentrations at 7 d post-infection compared with those of birds without BLJ supplementation ( < 0.05). NE-infected birds fed BLJ exhibited significantly upregulated claudin-1 and mRNA levels ( < 0.05), increased mRNA expression and significantly downregulated , and mRNA levels in the jejunum at 7 d post-infection compared with those in birds without BLJ supplementation ( < 0.05). Compared with the uninfected and untreated birds, the uninfected birds fed BLJ displayed increased relative abundances of and but reduced Rikenellaceae levels. Compared with the unsupplemented NE-challenged birds, infected birds fed BLJ showed an increased relative abundance of Unclassified_Lachnospiraceae and a significantly decreased relative abundance of Erysipelotrichaceae.

CONCLUSION

BLJ supplementation improved growth performance and gut health in NE-infected broiler chickens by strengthening the intestinal barrier function, positively modulating the gut microbiota community and differentially regulating intestinal immune responses. Our results also suggested that adding BLJ effectively controlled NE infections after experimental and coinfection.