Adult-hen microbial contact changes broiler resilience without raising live weight

A study published on 10 October examines whether early microbial contact with adult hens can influence broilers’ response to stress. The question matters because commercial chicks are normally raised without adult birds, meaning early intestinal colonisation is largely shaped by the housing environment.

The experiment involved 128 day-old broilers. One group had contact with adult hens until day 10, after which the hens were removed. On days 18 and 20, some birds received lipopolysaccharide to induce an inflammatory stress response. Researchers measured body weight, cecal microbiota, metabolites and gene-expression markers in the intestine and liver.

The contact did not alter body weight or ileal histomorphology. It did, however, significantly reshape cecal microbial diversity and composition, was associated with higher volatile-fatty-acid production and changed tryptophan metabolism. Molecular signals also indicated changes in intestinal-barrier and antioxidant-defence pathways. Under lipopolysaccharide challenge, prior microbial contact attenuated some host responses associated with stress.