Vet World   Vol.16   February-2023  Article-16

Application of botanical products as nutraceutical feed additives for improving poultry health and production

Background and Aim: Poultry is one of the most consumed sources of animal protein around the world. To meet the global demands for poultry meat and eggs, it is necessary to improve their nutrition to sustain the poultry industry. However, the poultry industry faces several challenges, including feedstuff availability, the banning of antibiotics as growth promoters, and several environmental stressors. Therefore, there is a critical need to include available nutraceuticals in the diet to sustain the poultry industry. Nutraceuticals are natural chemical substances that positively influence animal physiological and productive traits. Botanical products (such as fenugreek seeds, ginger roots, and olive leaves) are among the most commonly used nutraceuticals and are gradually gaining popularity in the poultry industry due to their immense benefits in nutrition and therapeutic properties. They can be added to the diet separately or in combination (as a natural antioxidant and immunostimulant) to improve poultry health and production. Botanical products are rich in essential oils and essential fatty acids, which have multiple benefits on the animal's digestive system, such as activating the digestive enzymes and restoring microbiota balance, enhancing poultry health, and production. These nutraceuticals have been shown to stimulate the expression of several genes related to growth, metabolism, and immunity. In addition, the essential oil supplementation in poultry diets up-regulated the expression of some crucial genes associated with nutrient transportation (such as glucose transporter-2 and sodium-glucose cotransporter-1). Previous studies have suggested that supplementation of botanical compounds increased broiler body weight and hen egg production by approximately 7% and 15%, respectively. Furthermore, the supplementation of botanical compounds enhanced the reproductive efficiency of hens and the semen quality of roosters by 13%. This review article discusses the significant effects of some botanical products in the poultry industry and how they can benefit poultry, especially in light of the ban on antibiotics as growth promoters.

Keywords: antioxidant, egg production, essential fatty acids, fertility rate, immunological response, meat quality, nutraceuticals, welfare.

How to cite this article: El-Sabrout K, Khalifah A, and Mishra B (2023) Application of botanical products as nutraceutical feed additives for improving poultry health and production, Veterinary World, 16(2): 369–379.

Received: 14-08-2022  Accepted: 23-01-2023     Published online: 25-02-2023

Corresponding author: Karim El-Sabrout and Birendra Mishra   E-mail: kareem.badr@alexu.edu.eg and bmishra@hawaii.edu

DOI: 10.14202/vetworld.2023.369-379

Copyright: El-Sabrout, et al. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.