MagnaFerm Supra Yeast Culture is consistently favored for use in diets as it enhances the activity of the gut’s naturally beneficial bacteria. These beneficial bacteria symbiotically protect gut integrity, boost protein and energy digestion, and safely convert feed to food without chemicals or antibiotics.
These GI benefits, first capitalized on in the dairy industry, have also proven to be profitable for poultry production. MagnaFerm Supra is a more concentrated yeast culture that is specially designed to promote poultry profits.
In addition to active yeast and their metabolites, the action of MagnaFerm Supra’s hydrolyzed yeast cell walls and intracellular extracts are a key to capturing the benefits for profitable poultry production. The main prerequisite to uniformly healthy poultry performance is a large and stable population of intestinal microflora. Newly hatched poultry in nature acquire a stable and beneficial community of intestinal microbes as the baby birds constantly sample their environment. Nature drives them to hunt-and-peck, picking up surrounding food sources that are naturally inoculated with beneficial bacteria from the droppings of healthy adult birds. The fully-developed bacterial colonies are recycled to the young bird’s environment. The droppings of healthy adults are beneficial because the adults have already fought off challenges to build their own adapted bacterial community. These mature, complex bacterial communities are in partnership with each other, and in partnership with the flock. They have evolved to use the food sources the adults pick up, and in return for that optimal nutrient supply they team up to crowd out pathogenic invaders that might harm their gracious hosts.
Modern poultry are delayed in this development. Efficient and healthy, clean commercial hatcheries lack the same natural exposure to beneficial microbial communities as observed in nature. Naïve, unexposed birds are transported at day-of-age to unpopulated growing facilities, and immediately begin developing low-grade intestinal inflammation. A trial by fire, each bird is on its own to develop a successful microbial community. Starting with very few transient species of bacteria, the microbial community continually shifts and rebalances as the bird ages. A wider, more complex variety of bacteria are recruited as the bird matures. The bacterial species mix in the small intestine and the caecum will each evolve into separate communities to suit the differing environment in each section of the gut. If all goes well, the microbes will be predominantly beneficial species, eventually developing a uniformly stable coexistence around day 14 that benefits them and the bird. The delicate community is constantly balancing to hold a steady-state, and disturbing the balance with insults like gut pathogens and stress will derail poultry profit.
A stable neighborhood of cooperating intestinal bacteria is a protective community that naturally guards its host, the bird, from intestinal harm. The mutually-supportive microbial colony unites 3 major functions to symbiotically protect the host bird that harbors it:
1. Microbes keep their home secure by supporting stronger gut structure and integrity
2. The healthy gut structure optimizes nutrient absorption, growth and efficiency
3. As a very large immune organ, the gut provides a robust defense from disease-causing pathogens and stressors
This triad of natural functions is characteristic of a healthy, properly functioning gut. MagnaFerm Supra stabilizes the intestinal environment from the inside-out, and ensures that birds continue to perform as efficiently as possible, even when facing pathogen or mycotoxin exposure. MagnaFerm Supra promotes better gut structure or morphology. A healthy gut gives the bird a superior nutrient supply by virtue of better digestion, and the healthy gut and immune organs it supports are key defense systems.
Better gut structure and integrity
A healthy, non-infected gut remains thinner without the thickened “garden hose” walls that come from the inflammation and swelling when the intestine responds to defend against an insult. Low-level or sub-therapeutic antibiotics have been used as gut conditioners to limit certain bacteria and their toxins. These antibiotics are products of fungal fermentation, scaled-up, harvested and purified. Similarly, organic products of yeast fermentation, collectively called metabolites, are secreted during yeast fermentation and released during hydrolysis along with cell wall components. These metabolites promote the growth and type of the beneficial microbial populations, but do not carry the same burden of negative publicity that antibiotics bear. Because the gut microbe population is larger, it is a stronger force to actively defend the bird’s intestine against pathogens, toxins, and allergens. Unless protected by the microbial neighborhood defenses, the intestine suffers damage from inflammation and swelling, and can lose much of its absorptive surface from stunting of the finger-like villi.
Without a microbial defense, and with significant percentages of its villi surface area worn away, the intestinal wall is more prone to pathogen invasion, leaking body fluids and electrolytes, and decreasing absorptive capacity. Bird health suffers and precious weight gain is lost. MagnaFerm Supra provides the support necessary to protect intestinal villus tissue against the fusing or blunting caused by pathogens (figure 1). In the face of damaging pathogens and toxins, MagnaFerm Supra helps a healthier intestinal architecture form, with characteristically lower lesion scores (figure 2).
Optimized nutrient absorption, growth and efficiency
MagnaFerm Supra’s improved, healthier gut structure naturally leads to better absorption and reduced intestinal turnover. A properly functioning intestine, one with more absorptive surface, presents more protein and energy to growing tissues. Less intestinal cell turnover cuts the energy waste to deliver lower maintenance cost. Consistently improved digestive function shown in figure 3 leads to predictably positive results in broiler growth (+2.83%) and feed efficiency (+2.57%) compared to unsupplemented basal diets.
Robust defense from disease-causing pathogens
There cannot be a stronger symbiotic relationship than the one linking the community of gastrointestinal microbes and poultry health. That is because the non-harmful bacteria guard their host, defensively blocking colonization by pathogens where it counts most, inside the bird’s body.
The gut also has its own built-in set of immune responses to kill bacteria. As a good host, the bird must also limit the gut’s response and tolerate the beneficial bacterial community. If the microbial defenses break, the bird’s intestinal tissue can mount its own defense against pathogens, but doing so, costs in the same way any other infection does… with swelling, edema, fluid losses and irritation. And worse…it suffers damage from sloughing precious intestinal cells. Stripped sections of gut with no absorptive surface further aggravate the problems because of poor digestion. The problem becomes a downward spiral for the bird and for your wallet.
In addition to strengthening beneficial bacteria, MagnaFerm Supra’s hydrolyzed yeast extract offers easy-to-access binding sites that agglutinate certain bacteria. Some of the adhering type pathogens that would otherwise stick to the intestinal wall and erode its surface are competitively bound to hydrolyzed yeast fractions. These pathogens include strains of E. coli, S. typhimurium and S. enteriditis. The gut can upregulate its defenses against pathogens, and MagnaFerm Supra helps make this defense stronger and more effective; as the results in figures 4 and 5 show. Stronger blood-borne immunity and reduced infection are seen following a challenge.
The bird’s gut is where you make your living. It is where your bird’s energy and immunity are focused; a delicate organ where you efficiently convert feed to food. Precariously balanced between harboring beneficial microbes and excluding pathogens, any crack in the gut’s architecture or protective community can turn your biggest profit into your biggest problem. Protecting poultry from external assault is best done from the inside, and MagnaFerm Supra adds protection you cannot afford to be without.