Optimum nutrient digestion and absorption depends on high quality feed ingredients.
Feed particle size is very important for gizzard development. A well-developed gizzard is essential to enhance grinding activity, leading to not only increased gut motility and greater digestion of nutrients, but also to greater reduction in particle size entering the small intestine, ultimately increasing the accessibility of the feed to digestive enzymes. Poor pellet quality and excess fine particles can reduce gizzard function which can increase the incidence of feed passage (undigested feed in the animal’s waste) and dysbacteriosis or microbial imbalance.
High levels of antinutritional factors in the feed could lead to poor digestibility, resulting in more undigested protein in the intestinal lumen. The presence of undigested protein in the lumen favors the proliferation of pathogenic bacteria, such as