Response of rice gluten meal feeding on gastrointestinal microbiota and immunity in layer chicken

An experiment was undertaken with 38wk old CARI Priya layers (n=150) and assigned to ten treatments (i.e. 2 control + 8 test diets) having 15 birds in each treatment. Ten experimental diets consist of maize-soybean based control diets without and with enzyme (D1-D2) four dietary inclusion levels (10, 12.5, 15 and 17.5%) of rice gluten meal (RGM) without (D3, D5, D7 and D9)/with enzymes (D4, D6, D8 and D10). All the diets were iso-caloric and iso-nitrogenous in nature. Dietary inclusion of RGM with and without protease enzyme improved cell mediated (response to phyto-haemagglutinin-P) and humoral immunity (response to sheep red blood cells). At the end of trail, four birds from each dietary treatment were sacrificed by cervical dislocation; crop and jejunum scraping were collected in sterile vials for evaluation of total microbial load colonization. RGM with and without protease enzyme has beneficial effect on gut health in terms of bacterial population. Inclusion of 12.5 and 17.5% level of RGM was found to lower (P<0.01) the total viable count (TVC) in crop while in jejunum TVC was significantly (P<0.01) lower at 15 and 17.5% level of RGM. Though, lactobacillus count was significantly (P<0.01) higher at 15 and 17.5% levels of RGM in jejunum but have no significant (P>0.05) effect at crop region. Addition of enzyme had significant (P<0.01) effect on TVC in crop and jejunum, whereas, it did not had any significant (P>0.05) effect on lactobacillus count at either crop or jejunum.