Probiotic Supplement for Chicken Feed

[xerxesdarius]

Hello,
My company is working on designing a probiotic supplement for chicken feed, and we'd like some input from farmers and retailers on what the most important things are to them in terms of the supplement's effects:
Should it decrease chicken mortality?
Increase speed of weight gain?
Help protect against other diseases?
Etc.
What are the most important things to you that our product could help with? Thanks for your time and opinions.

 

[murphyfarm]

The most important things to me are a low mortality rate and with that comes a low chance of disease!!

 

[xerxesdarius]

Thanks for your input! Those are 2 of the characteristics we're focused on right now.

 

[Chris09]

What would be the difference between your probiotic and say the probiotics, prebiotics and yeast that is most all feeds today?

 

[xerxesdarius]

We intend to breed our bacteria for optimal effect. That is our current research project, actually.

 

[3riverschick]

Hi,

Well then support of the proper flora ratio in the gut is paramount. If we want to achieve all these aims of less mortality ,etc. then the best place to start is enhancing the foundation upon which the immune system is maturing during the 1st 1 to 14 days of life ( especially the 1st 7 days) . Interdict the developmental timeline at the right place and use the right strains of probiotic to quickly establish the proper efficient functioning of the G.I. tract. Then the G.I. tract will be more able to uptake and make available to the body systems more of the nutrition they need. Treating symptoms is not half as important as enhancing the foundation.
Also this nutty idea that chicks don't need to eat for the 1st 24 to 48 hours needs to stop. The chick uses the yolk sac to feed its developing immune system after hatch. If the chick is not fed during the 1st 48 hours it uses the yolk sac for feed and the chick does not grow to its potential because that yolk sac was meant for other purposes which impact the growth of the chick.
So, if we feed the chick the right feed and the right probiotics from hatch, we do 3 things.
1. We leave the yolk sac to be used as intended.
2. We create as soon as possible, the properly populated and efficiently functioning G.I. tract.
3. We help enhance the foundation upon which the immune system is maturing by enabling this G.I. tract to efficiently uptake the nutrients it needs to mature properly.
In return we get a robust chick , better able to handle the challenges of its environment.
Best,
Karen

 

[xerxesdarius]

Interesting.

We do intend to do trial runs with multiple generations of just-hatched chicks that are supplemented as well as older developing chickens. What percentage improvement over a control group would be convincing to you, and in what areas: straight mortality, mortality adjusted feed efficiency, maturation time? We are actually quite interested in the details of what sort of performance chicken growers want, and at what improvement level they might be convinced to try our product.

Also, we have decided to create dry feed additives. We'd decided that if we could solve the caking issues in the additive that it would be much easier than adding to the water, although we did give that some thought as well. Any strong preferences on this point? We came to this conclusion after talking to some farmers and looking at the current products.