Feed Additives in Poultry

Abstract

Poultry is an important source of animal protein, as it is considered an essential and effective pillar in filling an important part of the human nutritional needs. The poultry industry has made great progress in recent years and the productivity of poultry has increased significantly with high efficiency as a result of the progress and great efforts that have been made in applied research in various fields science of this industry. During recent years, attention has been paid to using plants with medicinal efficacy as alternates to antibiotics and growth improvement, mostly in the European Union, where antibiotics were banned in the diets of poultry flocks since 2006 due to concerns about increasing microbial resistance to the antibiotics used in poultry diets. The high costs and the possibility of developing microbial resistance to antibiotics has led to an urgent need to use another replacement to antibiotics in poultry feeding, such as the use of probiotics, organic acids, essential oils and phytogenic compounds with medicinal properties for the purpose of maintaining the health of poultry and obtaining the highest production in poultry flocks. The most common feed replacement used in poultry ration are antioxidants, antibacterial materials, enzymes, growth promoters and immune modulators, metabolites or substances that improve the pH and the internal environment of the intestine. Therefore, in this article, we will shed light on the most remarkable feed supplements used in poultry diets for the purpose of improving and increasing production efficiency in poultry field.