Probiotic mediated intestinal microbiota and improved performance, egg quality and ovarian immune function of laying hens at different laying stage

Hengyong Xu; Yuxiang Lu; Dan Li; Chaoyang Yan; Yuru Jiang; Zhi Hu; Zhipeng Zhang; Ranran Du; Xiaoling Zhao; Yao Zhang; Yaofu Tian; Qing Zhu; Yiping Liu; Yan Wang

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2023.1041072

Probiotic mediated intestinal microbiota and improved performance, egg quality and ovarian immune function of laying hens at different laying stage

Front Microbiol. 2023 Jan 24:14:1041072. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2023.1041072. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Hengyong Xu^{1

2}, Yuxiang Lu^{1

2}, Dan Li^{1

2}, Chaoyang Yan^{1

2}, Yuru Jiang^{1

2}, Zhi Hu^{1

2}, Zhipeng Zhang^{1

2}, Ranran Du^{1

2}, Xiaoling Zhao^{1

2}, Yao Zhang², Yaofu Tian², Qing Zhu^{1

2}, Yiping Liu^{1

2}, Yan Wang^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Livestock and Poultry Multi-omics, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, College of Animal and Technology (Institute of Animal Genetics and Breeding), Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China.
² Farm Animal Genetic Resources Exploration and Innovation, Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China.

Abstract

In order to investigate the effects of dietary probiotics supplementation on laying performance, egg quality, serum hormone levels, immunity, antioxidant, and gut microbiota of layers at different laying stages, a total of 168 Tianfu green shell laying hens (28-day-old) were randomly divided into 2 treatments: a non-supplemented control diet (NC), and diet supplemented with 10 g/kg of probiotics, respectively. Each treatment had 6 replicates with 14 hens per replicate. The feeding trial lasted for 54 weeks. The results showed that the supplementation of probiotics significantly increased the average egg weight, improved egg quality (p < 0.05) and ovarian development. Meanwhile, probiotics increased the serum hormone levels of E₂ and FSH, and antioxidant indices T-AOC and T-SOD (p < 0.05) of laying hens at different laying stages (p < 0.05), decreased the expression of proinflammatory factors including IL-1, IL-6 and TNF-α (p < 0.05). Furthermore, using 16S rRNA sequencing, we observed that the addition of probiotics increased the distribution of Firmicutes, Bacteroidota and Synergistota at early laying period. Meanwhile, Bacteroidota, Actinobacteriota, Verrucomicrobiota and Deferribacterota showed an increasing trend at the peak of egg production. The relative abundance of Firmicutes, Desulfobacterota and Actinobacteriota were significantly increased at the late laying period. Moreover, PICRUSt2 and BugBase analysis revealed that at the late laying period, the probiotics supplementation not only enriched many significant gene clusters of the metabolism of terpenoids and polyketide, genetic information processing, enzyme families, translation, transcription, replication and repair, and nucleotide metabolism, but also decreased the proportion of potential pathogenic bacteria. To sum up, these data show that the addition of probiotics not only improves the performance, egg quality, ovarian development and immune function of laying hens at different laying period, but also improves the gut microbiota of layers, thus enhances production efficiency.

Keywords: antioxidant capacity; egg quality; gut microbiota; laying hen; ovarian; probiotics.