Herb and Plant-derived Supplements in Poultry Nutrition

Abstract

Modern poultry industry faces the everlasting challenge of the growing demand for high-quality, low-priced food without compromising general hygiene, health, and welfare standards. To exploit optimal growth potential, antibiotic supplemented feeds were implemented in the past decades. But later on, alternative strategies to trigger the productive characteristics of birds were proposed, including the use of phytochemicals. Phytobiotics are herbs and their derivatives, endowed with many beneficial effects. Herbs and their products enhance feed intake by mitigating intestinal damage, strengthening intestinal integrity, compensating nutritional needs for local and general immune response, reducing the concentration of pathogenic microflora, and preventing local inflammatory response. This form of feed manipulation recently gained interest in the poultry sector due to the lack of side effects, immune system modulation boosting, and stress tolerance. On the other hand, several types of research highlighted the potentially harmful effects of some herbs and their metabolites. This raised concerns among consumers about their safety and implications as feed supplements or medicines. This chapter will provide insights into phytobiotics, their role in immunity and growth, and the possible risks of herbal supplemented feeds in the poultry sector.