Effect of dietary mannan oligosaccharide from Saccharomyces cerevisiae on live performance of broilers under Clostridium perfringens challenge

A 30-day broiler cage trial was conducted to evaluate the effect of dietary mannan oligosaccharide (MOS) from one commercial product (SAF-Mannan) on growth parameters, gut health and control pathogen colonization of broilers under Clostridium perfringens (C. perfringens) challenge. One hundred, 0-day-old male Ross 308 broilers were allocated in 4 experimental treatments for 30 days. The four dietary treatments were T1, standard broiler basal diets without any medication as a control (+CONT); T2, basal diets as in T1 plus C. perfringens challenge (-CONT); T3, enramycin 0.1 g/kg of feed plus C. perfringens challenge (ENRA); T4, SAF-Mannan at 0.5 g/kg in starter and finisher diets plus C. perfringens challenge (SAF). Overall, feed conversion ratio (FCR) and body weight gain (BWG) in treatments ENRA and SAF were significantly better (P<0.01) than the -CONT treatment, whereas treatment +CONT was intermediate and not different from SAF. Feed intake (FI) was not influenced by treatment. SAF-Mannan supplementation was able to lower the ileal C. perfringens count as compared to all other treatments (P<0.05). The changes in C. perfringens count appear in parallel to observed improvement in the cumulative FCR. The results from this study clearly indicated that SAF-Mannan could act as a replacement for antimicrobial growth promoters in broilers (AGPs). SAF-Mannan level of 0.05% was enough to achieve a response competitive with that of the antibiotic.