An experiment with 288 male (Ross 308) 1-d-old broilers was conducted to test the hypothesis that a coarse diet supplemented with butyric acid (BA) and fermentable carbohydrates (FC) improves performance of broilers with a poorly digestible protein source. The interaction effects of diet structure (fine or coarse), FC supplementation (with or without), and BA supplementation (with or without) i...

A total of 450 one-day-old Arbor Acres male chickens were used to investigate the effects of zinc oxide-montmorillonite hybrid (ZnO-MMT) on growth performance, intestinal structure, and function. The birds were allotted to 5 dietary treatments for 21 d, each of which was replicated 6 times with 15 chicks per replicate. The dietary treatments were 1) corn-soybean meal diet (basal, containing 42....

Digesta and tissue samples were collected from the intestinal tracts of 27 pigs to determine the relationship between intestinal morphology and the utilization of nutrients from soybean flakes. Soybean flake treatments were under-, intermediate- and over-processed (i.e., 5, 20 and 60 min of autoclaving) either without extraction or with heating before or after extraction with a 55% ethanol-wate...

Food deprivation has been found to stimulate cell proliferation in the gastric mucosa of suckling rats, whereas the weanling period has been reported to be unresponsive in terms of proliferative activity. In the present study we analyze regional differences in the effect of milk or food deprivation on cell proliferation of the epithelia of the esophagus and of five segments of small intestine i...

The current study investigated the efficacy of a probiotic mixture on ameliorating heat stress-induced impairment of intestinal microflora, morphology, and barrier integrity in broilers. The probiotic mixture contained Bacillus licheniformis, Bacillus subtilis, and Lactobacillus plantarum. Three hundred sixty 21-d-old Ross 308 male broilers were allocated in 4 experimental treatments, each of w...

Immature gilts were administered per os with zearalenone (ZEN) at 40 μg/kg BW (group Z, n = 9), deoxynivalenol (DON) at 12 μg/kg BW (group D, n = 9), a mixture of ZEN and DON (group M, n = 9) or a placebo (group C, n = 9) over a period of six weeks. The pigs were sacrificed after one, three, or six weeks of the treatment (12 pigs per each time-point). Histological investigations revealed an inc...

AIM This study was conducted with an aim of studying the efficacy of water supplements of Aloe vera and Azadirachta indica (neem) during pre-starter age (0-2 weeks) on gut health and histomorphometry in Vanaraja chicks. MATERIALS AND METHODS A total of 192 day old Vanaraja chicks were randomly assigned to one of four herbal water treatments throughout the experimental pre-starter stage (0-2 w...

BACKGROUND & AIMS Celiac disease (CeD) provides an opportunity to study autoimmunity and the transition in immune cells as dietary gluten induces small intestinal lesions. METHODS Seventy-three celiac disease patients on a long-term, gluten-free diet ingested a known amount of gluten daily for 6 weeks. A peripheral blood sample and intestinal biopsy specimens were taken before and 6 weeks aft...

Twenty-four 21-d-old Arbor Acres (AA) broilers with similar BW were randomly assigned into 4 groups to investigate the effects of stress on the absorption of glucose in the intestine of broilers and its mechanisms. In this study, dexamethasone (DEX), an analog to glucocorticoid secreted when animals suffer from stress, was chosen to simulate the effects of glucocorticoid. Broilers were injected...

The objective of this study was to investigate the morphological development of the small intestine of African ostrich chicks and to examine the changes in the number of goblet cells therein by observing the gross anatomy and performing histochemistry and morphometry. The BW; length, height, and width of the villi; muscle thickness; depth of the crypts; and number of goblet cells in the intesti...