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Bacterial Cultures in the Nutrition of Poultry

II. Effect of Dietary Coliform Cultures on the Growth and Cecal Flora of Poults¹

Departments of Bacteriology and Poultry Husbandry, Ontario Agricultural College, Guelph, Canada

Broad Breasted Bronze poults were fed a practical diet supplemented with certain coliform cultures isolated from the cecal contents of chicks receiving penicillin. Feeding a mixed coliform culture or the viable cells from this culture resulted in improved weight of the poults when the diet contained penicillin. The weight increases were not significant at the 5% point. Neither the killed organisms nor the filtrate from this culture influenced poult weight. The results suggest that there was interaction between the viable mixed coliform organisms and penicillin.

A culture of typical E. coli caused a significant improvement in the weight of female poults in the absence of dietary penicillin and appeared to enhance slightly the activity of penicillin when fed along with the antibiotic.

In a further experiment a culture of atypical E. coli resulted in a weight response in female poults which approached significance at the 5% point. This culture did not influence weight when fed along with penicillin. Inclusion of 1% lactic acid in the diet caused a slight, but non-significant, increase in weight in the absence of penicillin and tended to depress growth in the presence of the antibiotic.

No consistent alterations in the cecal floral counts of aerobes, anaerobes, coliforms, lactobacilli, aciduric or enterococci types of organisms appeared to result from feeding penicillin or the various coliform cultures. Nor did the growth-promoting activity of penicillin and coliform cultures appear to be explicable simply on the basis of increases or decreases in these groups of organisms.

Manuscript received 3 October 1952.