Chicks do better with poop

Chicks that ate litter or material taken from the intestines of two-week-old poults performed better, researchers have found.

The resulting “inoculum” from the older birds “was found to be stable and improved both the growth and resistance to challenge with Campylobacter jejuni and Salmonella enteriditis,” the researchers report.

But they were surprised to find that chicks inoculated with a microbial community from used commercial poultry litter had body weight gains and pathogen resistance scores that were as good or better than chicks inoculated with material serially-transferred through multiple generations of birds.

The goal is to find substances that could be incorporated in feed to improve bird health and performance.

The research was done by a team from the Western University of Health Sciences and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service.