Various complex and dense microbes, including protozoa, bacteria, archaea, fungi and viruses, grow within the gastrointestinal tract of your domestic animals. These microbial communities in animals help in fermentation and digestion of plant polymers that play a major role in the digestion of herbivorous animals.
What is a probiotic?
The term “probiotic” is derived from the Greek words “pro” and “biotic,” which means “for the life.” Probiotics refer to as live microbial feed supplements with a beneficial impact on the host animal. Meanwhile, it improves the balance of microbial intestinal enzymes.
Probiotics are the components of the microbial cell that have many benefits on the health of the host. Over the years, probiotics have been used in various ways. The use of probiotics in animal nutrition dates back to 75 years. However, it was in the 1960s when Lactobacillus was demonstrated to stimulate pigs’ growth.
As per old reports, food could even be taken as medicine. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, also conceived the same concept thousands of years ago by stating – “Let food be thy medicine, and medicine thy food.” Even today, the notion of food containing medicinal value has been reborn with the term “functional foods.” Functional foods have attained value in the fields of medicine and self-care.
Since modern consumers are more into personal health, they like to consume healthy foods, as well as provide a healthy diet to their animals for possible health benefits.
Effective Ways to Use Probiotics
In animals, there are robust and dynamic bacterial communities essential for health and productivity. When these communities form positively, better overall health results emerge.
There are numerous bacteria and yeast strains with each having a different effect. To get better results, you should use probiotics in the following ways:
- Alive: Pick probiotics containing viable or live yeast or bacteria. These products contain a minimum viability guarantee on their product label.
- Specific: Probiotics with specifically selected strains have proven to deliver better health outcomes in domestic animals.
- Feed Daily: You can include probiotics in livestock rations every day for maintaining an effective level.
- From a Trusted Manufacturer: Make sure preserves are handled well during the probiotic activity throughout the distribution process.
Conclusion – Future of Animal Probiotics
Due to the increasing demand for probiotics from cattle farmers and various animal sectors, it’s expected to see the adoption of new probiotic technologies in the future. Some major players are spending time and money on research and development for finding novel applications and products. Even nano encapsulated probiotics are being expected to form numerous opportunities for this particular industry. Probiotics are also likely to be used for various other applications in animals, such as reducing stress levels and boosting immunity. It can even improve the quality of meat and eggs while reducing salmonella. Overall, the microorganisms found in probiotics have been approved for providing better animal nutrition, as they won’t constitute any major health hazard in animals. Thus, you must feed probiotics to animals for their better health and production of end products. This way, the future of probiotics in the animal sector seems to highly effective and fruitful.
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