Location: Livestock Behavior Research
Project Number: 5020-32000-014-013-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Aug 21, 2024
End Date: Sep 30, 2025
Objective:
To evaluate the impact of dietary synbiotics on broiler health and welfare under combined heat stress and immune challenge.
Approach:
Synbiotics can improve immune response in heat stressed chickens via the gut-brain axis, and heat stress increases gut dysbiosis. Synbiotic may improve thermotolerance and intestinal impermeability of broilers through modifying gut microbiome. Using their expertise in behavioral observation and analysis, the cooperator will develop an ethogram to observe stress-induced behavioral changes and correlations with physiological and immune changes in broilers. In the study, chicks will be evenly assigned to pens in two rooms with or without heat stress, then randomly divided into four treatments including Lipopolysaccharides and/or synbiotics. Treatment effects on behavioral, physiological, immune, and neurotransmitter changes will be examined.
