ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Anim. Sci.
Sec. Animal Nutrition
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fanim.2025.1539543
Evaluation of phytase super dosing and its combinations with other additives as an alternative to antibiotic growth promoters in broiler chickens reared in deep litter systems
Provisionally accepted
Shyam Sundar Paul*
Savaram Venkata Rama Rao
Rudra Nath Chatterjee
Mantena Venkata Lakshmi Narasimha RajuBhukya PrakashSatya Pal YadavAlagarsamy Kannan
GODUMAGADDA NARENDER REDDY
Vikas Kumar
Santosh Phani Kumar Prakki- Directorate of Poultry Research (DPR), ICAR, Hyderabad, India
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Antimicrobial growth promoters (AGPs) have traditionally been used in chicken production to improve performance. However, such products may promote the development and spread of antimicrobial resistance genes (ARG) which is of huge societal concern. The evaluation of newer feed additives as an alternative to AGP for broiler chickens in terms of their effect on gut microbes and resistome profile besides effectiveness under challenging housing systems like deep litter systems under tropical conditions is urgently needed. We investigated the comparative efficacy of phytase super dosing (P, Phytase at 2000 FTY/kg feed) alone and its combinations with other feed additives namely Phytase plus butyrate (PB, Phytase 2000 FTU/kg feed plus encapsulated sodium butyrate 500g/t feed) phytase plus essential oil (EO) (PE, phytase 2000 FTU/kg feed plus encapsulated essential oil 400g/t feed) and phytase plus probiotic Bacillus subtilis (PBS, phytase 2000 FTU/kg feed plus Bacillus subtilis 400g/t feed) as an alternative to AGPs besides two control groups namely an AGP bacitracin methylene disalicylate (B, 500 g/t feed) and negative control (C) on growth, immunity, feed efficiency, and survivability under deep litter system of rearing and also compared gut microbiome and resistome profile in the best performing treatment group and control groups. At day 35, broilers fed the phytase alone or in combination with butyrate or EO or Bacillus subtilis gave significantly higher cumulative performance in terms of feed efficiency than those fed the B or C with the best feed efficiency recorded in the PE group. Overall, there were 4.57, 4.0, 5.14, 6.28, 2.86, and 1.71% cumulative average mortality rates in the groups C, B, P, PB, PE, and PBS, respectively. The supplementation of Phytase at a super dosing level plus encapsulated EO resulted in a significant increase in relative abundance of beneficial bacteria in the gut compared to the controls. The density of ARG or mobile genetic elements was not influenced by treatments. The study showed that phytase super dosing alone could deliver better feed efficiency in broiler chickens compared to control or AGP and encapsulated EO or Bacillus subtilis plus phytase super dosing can reduce the mortality rate.
Keywords: phytase super dosing, gut microbiome, antimicrobial resistance, antibiotic growth promoter, broiler chicken
Received: 04 Dec 2024; Accepted: 07 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Paul, Rama Rao, Chatterjee, Raju, Prakash, Yadav, Kannan, NARENDER REDDY, Kumar and Prakki. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Shyam Sundar Paul, Directorate of Poultry Research (DPR), ICAR, Hyderabad, India
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