Efeitos de probiótico in ovo sobre o rendimento de incubação e as características morfosiológicas de pintos de corte

Abstract

In ovo nutrition has investigated the effectiveness of substances, such as probiotics, in order to improve poultry performance and replace antibiotics. However, most research uses methodology incompatible with the practical applicability, analyzing few bacterial strains and do not perform this procedure in commercial hatcheries. Our goal with this study was to investigate whether large-scale, automated in ovo inoculation of a commercial multi-strain probiotics associated with in ovo vaccination, affects incubation yield, morphophysiological characteristics and quality of newly hatched chicks from broiler breeders Cobb® with 35 weeks of age. We used a completely randomized design, with three treatments: control (without inoculation), in ovo vaccination (hatchery standard) and in ovo vaccination associated with the probiotic. The incubation was performed according to the normal hatchery routine and at 18.5 days of incubation the solutions were injected directly into the amniotic cavity. We evaluated the parameters such as: hatchability, embryo mortality, acid-base balance of the newly-hatched chick, as well as its weight, YFBM, RY, length and navel score, with no statistical differences between treatments (P>0.05). Organ weights, blood parameters and intestinal morphometry revealed differences in some analyzed variables (p≤0.05) without chick quality damage. The technique of associating in ovo vaccination with the multi-strain probiotic used in this research is safe to be carried out in industry, as it preserves chick homeostasis and does not interfere with the incubation efficiency. It is recommended further studies associating the inoculation of in ovo multiple strains probiotics and their effects throughout the period of poultry farming, to verify benefits related to the performance and the answers to the challenges in the field.