Gastrointestinal Development and Microbiota Responses of Geese to Honeycomb Flavonoids Supplementation

Chenxin He; Huadong Wu; Yaning Lv; Hongnan You; Liqing Zha; Qin Li; Yani Huang; Jinghong Tian; Qiuchun Chen; Yiwen Shen; Shiyuan Xiong; Fuguang Xue

doi:10.3389/fvets.2021.739237

Gastrointestinal Development and Microbiota Responses of Geese to Honeycomb Flavonoids Supplementation

Front Vet Sci. 2021 Oct 18:8:739237. doi: 10.3389/fvets.2021.739237. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Chenxin He¹, Huadong Wu¹, Yaning Lv¹, Hongnan You², Liqing Zha¹, Qin Li¹, Yani Huang¹, Jinghong Tian¹, Qiuchun Chen¹, Yiwen Shen¹, Shiyuan Xiong¹, Fuguang Xue^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Nanchang Key Laboratory of Animal Health and Safety Production, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang, China.
² School of Foreign Language, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang, China.
³ Jiangxi Province Key Laboratory of Animal Nutrition/Engineering Research Center of Feed Development, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang, China.

Abstract

Background: Geese are conventionally considered to be herbivorous, which could also be raised with concentrate feeding diets without green grass because of the similar gastrointestinal tract with other poultry. However, the geese gut microbiota profiles and their interactions with epithelial cells are still of limited study. Flavonoids were well-documented to shape gut microbiota and promote epithelial barrier functions individually or cooperatively with other metabolites. Therefore, in the present study, honeycomb flavonoids (HF) were supplemented to investigate the effects on growth performances, intestinal development, and gut microbiome of geese. Material and Methods: A total of 400 1-day-old male lion-head geese with similar birth weight (82.6 ± 1.4 g) were randomly divided into five treatments: the control treatment (CON) and the HF supplementation treatments, HF was supplemented arithmetically to increase from 0.25 to 1%. Growth performance, carcass performances, and intestines' development parameters were measured to determine the optimum supplement. Junction proteins including ZO-1 and ZO-2 and cecal microbiota were investigated to demonstrate the regulatory effects of HF on both microbiota and intestinal epithelium. Results: Results showed that 0.5% of HF supplement had superior growth performance, carcass performance, and the total parameters of gastrointestinal development to other treatments. Further research showed that tight junction proteins including ZO-1 and ZO-2 significantly up-regulated, while Firmicutes and some probiotics including Clostridiales, Streptococcus, Lachnoclostridium, and Bifidobacterium, remarkably proliferated after HF supplement. In conclusion, HF supplement in concentrate-diet feeding geese effectively increased the growth performances by regulating the gut microbiota to increase the probiotic abundance to promote the nutrient digestibility and fortify the epithelial development and barrier functions to facilitate the nutrient absorption and utilization.

Keywords: geese; growth performance; gut microbiota; honeycomb flavonoids; intestinal epithelium.