The combination of intestinal conditioner and optimizer pronutrients is an effective solution to prevent coccidiosis based on strengthening the digestive epithelia and stimulating local gut immunity of birds, without resistances nor residues, differently from traditional coccidiostats.

Objectives

1. To evaluate the efficacy of intestinal conditioner and optimizer pronutrients to prevent coccidiosis in broilers challenged with Eimeria.
2. To evaluate if pronutrients are effective when combined with salinomycin (on top and in shuttle programs).

Experimental design and methodology

240 one-day-old Cobb broilers were distributed into 8 treatments. On day 18, all the groups but NC received a cocci challenge with 8,000 oocysts of E. acervulina, E. maxima and, predominantly, E. tenella. Differences were considered significant when P < 0.05 and are expressed in the table as different letters in the same column.

Results

All the supplemented groups obtained better weight gain and feed conversion rate (FCR) than the infected untreated group, similarly to healthy birds in PC. The best weight gain was observed in CNB+SAL (pronutrients and salinomycin) and DIC+NAR (diclazuril and narasin), with +145.5 g/bird and 148.2 g/bird. Feed conversion got improved up to 4.5% in CNB+SAL (pronutrients and salinomycin). All the supplements improved the survival rate, particularly the group with salinomycin and pronutrients together. Efficiency index (EI) got improved by 77 points with pronutrients and salinomycin.

 Oocyst counts on days 6 and 7 post challenge proved that supplements controlled oocyst shedding, since the counts were significantly lower (between 63.7 and 82.9%) in all supplemented groups.

Conclusions

On one hand, the challenge significantly empaired performance since the positive control obtained the worst results. On the other hand, supplements could prevent the consequences of coccidiosis given that they all obtained better parameters globally: weight gain (+140 g/bird), feed conversion rate (4.5% improvement), survival rate (+11 points); besides, oocyst counts decreased up to 83%.

The traditional anticoccidial program obtained the worst results compared to the other supplements, hence, it was the least effective to prevent coccidiosis. On the contrary, all the groups with pronutrients (whether alone or in combination with salinomycin) improved productive performance, an indicator of better animal welfare.

Ultimately, pronutrients were proved effective to prevent coccidiosis and are a highly versatile solution to be administered alone or combined with traditional coccidiostats to strengthen their effect and slow down the development of resistances. When given alone, pronutrients obtain good results without resistances nor residues in meat or other animal products.

The combination of intestinal conditioner and optimizer pronutrients is available under the name Alquernat Coneb, marketed by Biovet, S.A.