Two experiments were carried out to study the effects of dietary supplementation with the industrial garlic (Allium sativum)-derived product PTS-O (DMC Research Center, Granada, Spain) on gut pathogen and potentially pathogen bacteria, intestinal morphology and growth performance in broiler chickens. The additive had no significant effect on feed intake at any dose assayed in both experiments. In the first experiment (1-21 d of age), birds fed with 45 mg PTS-O / kg diet had significantly (P < 0.01) higher BW respect to controls. Birds fed diets containing 45 and 90 mg PTS-O / kg diet had improved (P < 0.01) F/G ratios respect to controls at 21 d of age. Ileal villus height, width and surface area, mucosal thickness and muscular layer thickness were considerably greater (P < 0.01) than control values in chickens fed with 90 mg PTS-O / kg diet. Clostridium perfringens log10 number of counts was not significantly affected at any dose assayed. PTS-O inclusion at both concentrations (45 and 90 mg / kg diet) resulted in lower (P < 0.01) ileal Salmonella spp and crop Enterobacteria and Escherichia coli log10 number of copies. Inclusion of 90 mg PTS-O / kg diet also gave place to lower (P < 0.01) Enterobacteria and E. coli log10 number of copies in ileal and caecal contents, resp. Campylobacter jejuni number of copies was not significantly affected. In experiment 2 (15-28 d of age), significantly (P < 0.01) lower log10 number of copies were determined in ileal contents for Salmonella spp and C. jejuni in chickens fed diets containing 135 mg PTS-O / kg diet, while the addition of 90 mg PTS-O / kg diet only lowered (P < 0.01) ileal Salmonella spp counts. The present investigation confirmed previous in vitro data, and showed that dietary PTS-O addition lowered pathogen and potentially pathogen intestinal bacterial counts, and improved ileal histological structure and productive parameters of broilers.

This research has been supported by the Spanish MEC (AGL 2009-11925) and also by the FEDER and FSE funds from the European Union

Peer reviewed