ISSUE FOCUS 32 FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE October 2023 NUTRITION AS A TOOL Nutrition is a tool to establish and maintain a proper intestinal health condition. Many measures can be implemented to optimize the diet for young animals. Especially in piglets, protein digestibility is important to avoid intestinal health problems after weaning. In piglets, stomach acid production is not sufficient resulting in a suboptimal protein digestion. Next, undigested protein is fermented by pathogenic bacteria in the hindgut resulting in endotoxin production and diarrheal incidence. To solve this, protein content and acid binding capacity of the piglet feed should be optimized. The protein content can be improved by selecting highly digestible protein sources instead of soybean meal. Some considerable options are soy protein concentrates, fermented soy protein or alternatives like milk protein, potato protein and fish meal. All these materials have a higher crude protein content and a higher digestibility compared to soybean meal. Simultaneously, the acid binding capacity of the diet should be lowered, which decreases stomach pH and increases protein digestion. Therefore, organic acids are standard in piglet diets. Key for piglets is to stimulate feed intake directly after weaning as this increases stomach acid secretion, digestive enzyme production and development of the intestinal epithelium. Generally, piglets that have a proper feed intake don’t show weaning diarrhea and have a higher body weight when they move to the finisher barn. Comparable to piglets, broiler chickens’ intestinal development is stimulated upon feed intake, so early access to feed is very important. But as chickens receive little immunity from the yolk and their intestine is sterile, steering the gut microbiome with nutrition is important to avoid dysbacteriosis. Dysbacteriosis is an imbalance of the intestinal microflora, which results in overgrowth of detrimental bacteria followed by intestinal inflammation and dirty litter. Controlling digestive disorders starts with coccidiosis control as this is a predisposing factor for the development of dysbacteriosis. Next, it is required to breakdown the vicious circle starting from an oversupply of nutrients or poor digestion and absorption and resulting in a shift in the microbiome and an altered gut barrier morphology and functioning. Many nutritional strategies can help to break this circle. Optimizing the protein content and amino acid profile to avoid fermentation of undigested protein into harmful amines and ammonia drives the crude protein of broiler diets to a minimum. Moreover, the selection of cereals is important as they are a source of non-starch polysaccharides, like arabinoxylans, glucans and mannans. Typically, NSP-enzymes like xylanase are supplemented to the diet to release more nutrients for the animal and to reduce gut viscosity that impacts digestion and intestinal health directly.
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