SPECIAL STORY 62 FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE June 2022 et al., under publication). Morgan et al. from the University of New England (under publication) has shown that, in broilers fed wheat-barley based diet, a stimbiotic decreased the concentration of β-glucans in the ileal digesta and reduced the viscosity to the same extent as a combination of a xylanase and a β-glucanase but only the stimbiotic was proven to increase SCFA concentration in the hindgut, showing increased carbohydrate fermentation. Even though the stimbiotic product does not contain a β-glucanase itself, it could potentially stimulated production of this and other fibre degrading enzymes by the microbiome (and hence reduced β-glucan concentration as well as viscosity) which is an efficient strategy to alleviate the negative effect of barley in broiler diets. In fact, several studies reported the beneficial effect from stimbiotic supplementation on microbiome modulation (Cordero et al., 2019; Parra Perez et al., 2021) through the stimulation of the fibrolytic bacteria that results in higher SCFA, low pH and increased caecal bacterial enzyme activity (Marinho et al., 2007; González-Ortiz et al., 2021). Altogether allowing a better gut resilience making animals better able to cope with enteric challenges. In fact, recent studies in poultry (Rousseau et al., under publication) and in swine (Cho et al., 2020) have demonstrated that the stimbiotic may be of interest to mitigate the enteric challenges animals are facing in commercial production systems. In the study from Cho et al., (2020), the stimbiotic reduced the inflammatory response from pigs placed in poor sanitary conditions, but also reduced the number of antibiotic interventions by 45%. Stimulating a more fibrolytic microbiome and lowering protein fermentation resulted in higher performing animals. In conclusion, there is clear evidence that promoting carbohydrate fermentation is something to consider and must be a goal to achieve for anyone who wants to extract the hidden value from hindgut fermentation with healthier animals. Better characterisation of the fibre content of feed ingredients and use of stimbiotic represents a relevant strategy to bring better gut resilience to the animals facing multifactorial sources of challenges in commercial production systems. For further information or references please contact emea@abvista.com About Dr Xavière Rousseau Dr Xavière Rousseau is Global Poultry Technical Manager in AB Vista based in France. She joined the company 9 years ago after completing her PhD working on dietary phosphorus optimisation in poultry and pigs with INRAE (France) and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. During this time, she built her knowledge on animal physiology and on the interactions between calcium, phosphorus and animal physiology before joining AB Vista team where she has developed her expertise on enzymes and how-to bring enzymes value to reach the different production objectives. Her last area of interest is to look at the dietary fibre fraction and how to better characterize this substrate as looking at the tools to analyse in order to define different strategies to optimize their use that would make sense for monogastric nutritionists looking for better productivity.
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