Phytogenics: Nature's toolbox for healthy Gut function in poultry birds

Dr. Shivi Maini, General Manager technical, Indian Herbs Specialities

The significance of gut health in poultry production cannot be understated, since it has a direct impact on bird performance, welfare, and overall production efficiency. A healthy gastrointestinal (GI) tract is necessary for optimized digestion, absorption, and utilization of nutrients that has impact on overall performance of birds. Overall, good gut health is essential for healthy poultry production. Producers work hard to improve gut health through balanced nutrition, management methods, and increasingly, the use of natural additives like as prebiotics, probiotics and phytogenics. Poultry producers that prioritize gut health can achieve higher output, lower illness incidence and improved animal welfare in their flocks. Here's a rundown of the most important aspects of gut health in poultry farming:
Growth performance and feed efficiency: Good gut health is closely related to poultry growth performance. Birds with a healthy gut may convert feed into body mass more efficiently, resulting in faster growth rate and optimized feed efficiency. The choice of safe and efficacious feed additives that helps to promote gut health not only benefits poultry producers with best returns on investment, but it also helps to achieve sustainable poultry production.
Efficient nutrient digestion and absorption: A healthy gut ensures that nutrients are digested and absorbed efficiently, maximizing the bird's growth potential and feed conversion efficiency.
Immune system function: A healthy gut promotes a diverse gut microbiota, which is essential for developing immunological tolerance and protecting against infections. An intact gut barrier prevents pathogen colonization in the gut, lowering the risk of infections and increasing the bird's overall resilience and resistance to disease.
Gut Microbiota Balance: A diversified and well-balanced gut flora is critical for sustaining gut health and general well-being in chickens. Peace keeping gut microflora helps attaining eubiosis. Dominance of pathobionts in the gut leads to dysbiosis. Good microbial community is important for nutrition metabolism, immune system development and disease prevention.
Phytogenics: Nature's toolbox for healthy gut function in poultry birds
Phytogenics, also known as botanicals or plant-derived compounds that has been demonstrated to benefit gut health in livestock and poultry. These phyto-bioactive compounds are derived from medicinal plants and have long been used in traditional medicinal and ethnoveterinary practices. Few salient examples are essential oils, tannins, flavonoids, saponins and phyto-compounds. The use of phytogenics in gut health promotion is mostly owing to their beneficial effects on the gastrointestinal system. This includes its efficacy to develop gut villi, gut immunity, strengthen gut barrier to prevent pathogen colonization. Many phytogenics are validated to owe natural antimicrobial or phytobiotic effect, others are known to possess anti-quorum sensing or quorum quenching effect. Usage of phytogenic feed supplements is recommended to maintain healthy gut microbiota balance and minimize the incidence of gastrointestinal infections.
Antioxidant activity: Phytogenics frequently contain antioxidants, which aid in the neutralization of free radicals and the protection of gastrointestinal cells from oxidative damage. This can help to improve overall gut health and maintain a healthy digestive tract.
Improved nutritional absorption: It has been demonstrated that certain phytogenics and their bioactive compounds help improving nutrient utilization and absorption. These substances can help to promote growth rate and feed efficiency.
Phytogenics appear to have promising effects for gut health. Indian Herbs Specialities took initiative to undetake in depth research to completely understand their mechanisms of action on basis of advanced scientific techniques such as complete gut microarray, metabolomics and quorum sensing . GustoCheck is a research breakthrough product of Indian Herbs. GustoCheck is a blend of natural herbal constituents used to maintain a healthy gut function and to prevent diarrhoea in poultry birds. It is intended to restore productivity, hatchability and improve quality meat and eggs. It prevents malabsorption and helps in reinvigorating dull birds and dehydrated birds along with improving the nutrients availability. It mainly addresses the problem of wet litter in poultry production which results in loss of fluids, pasty vents and staining of eggs. It optimizes the peristalsis and helps in removal of toxins and gases and prevents colonization of pathogens in gut.
Herbiotic-FS is a combination of selected herbs of natural origin to address the problems related to the use of synthetic antibiotics and their ill effects, high cost, microbial resistance and residue in meat.is a phytogenic feed supplement, composed of natural herbal ingredients to promote growth and development in poultry birds. It has potent antibacterial activity against many pathogenic bacteria such as Salmonella, E.coli and Clostridium. In addition to its antibacterial activity, it enhances the absorption of nutrients in the intestine by improving the villi height, villi width, crypt depth and width ratio along with reducing the inflammation caused by the pathogenic micro-organisms. Herbiotic FS is validated for its safety and efficacy in more than 25+ global trials. Mode of action of Herbiotic FS is deciphered on the basis of global gene expression, metagenomics and quorum sensing.

Summary
Phytogenics have garnered attention as potential antibiotic growth promoter (AGP) substitutes and as dietary supplements for encouraging optimal gut function. Phytogenics hold promise as natural alternatives to AGPs and for promoting optimum gut function in livestock and poultry. Their potential benefits in gut health management make them an interesting area of research and application for sustainable poultry production. However, as with any alternative approach, careful evaluation, and validation are essential before widespread implementation. Science based and thorughly researched phytogenic products and supplements serve as natures perfect toolbox for attaining a balanced gut health in poultry flocks.