A multifactorial analysis of the extent to which Eimeria and fishmeal predispose broiler chickens to clinical necrotic enteritis

Necrotic enteritis (NE) is an important infectious disease in chickens. Predisposing factors play critical roles both in disease outbreaks in the field and in models for experimental induction of disease. Systematic manipulation and study of predisposing factors help to optimize methods for the experimental reproduction of disease. The nature of such factors may play a confounding role in challenge models and, therefore, warrant investigation to determine their importance in industry-relevant NE reproduction models. In the present study, we examined the roles of dietary fishmeal inclusion, Eimeria inoculation (E), and Clostridium perfringens challenge (C) on broiler growth performance and induction of NE infection. The results showed that E, preceding C, greatly increased the severity of NE induced in broiler chickens, but fishmeal addition played only a marginal role in the challenge model. Bird performance was significantly affected by all three factors during the 35-day experimental period. Fishmeal increased body weight, but statistically significant effects of fishmeal were not observed on feed conversion ratio (FCR) and feed intake. Both Eimeria and C. perfringens significantly reduced body weight gain and feed intake. E but not C led to significantly poorer FCR. These findings indicate that dietary fishmeal may be removed from the model to allow the performance results of challenged chicks to be equivalent to the performance of chicks in the field. In conclusion, the present study demonstrates that an NE challenge model without fishmeal is valid and removes bird performance bias in the model introduced by feeding high fishmeal diets, refining the model to facilitate the yield of more commercially relevant results