HP AviStart - A head start for healthy broiler chickens

Young chicks have very different digestive and nutritional requirements than older broilers. The highly digestible protein in HP AviStart helps chicks get the very best start in life, improving your return on investment.

Chicks grow and develop at a high rate during the first two weeks after hatching. Each chick doubles in weight several times as the heart, liver and digestive tract gain the necessary size to support developing muscles and bones.

Many nutrients are necessary to assure proper growth, but the ability to absorb nutrients is limited by the chick’s underdeveloped digestive tract. In this sense, young chicks are more sensitive to a shortage in protein than in lipids or carbohydrates. The residual yolk provides 30% of the nutrients required for growth and maintenance after hatch. However, the protein contribution from the yolk sac is exhausted much earlier than that of energy (Swennen et al., 2010).

To overcome the limitations of the immature digestive tract, a special feed is essential. When nutrient uptake is enhanced during the first days of life, particularly that of protein, overall performance may be improved right up to slaughter. Tests prove HP AviStart can make a significant difference.

How HP AviStart is superior to soybean meal

HP AviStart is a unique product that contains an extremely low level of the anti-nutritional factors (ANF), which are known to disrupt normal intestinal function (Woyengo et al., 2017). Therefore, HP AviStart minimizes the impairments of nutrient digestibility and absorption due to ANF. High digestibility ensures the chicks gain full benefit of the product’s high level of essential amino acids. See last page of the leaflet for a general comparison between HP AviStart and regular soybean meal.

Correlation between digestibility and gut health and intestinal development in chickens

It has been demonstrated that variation in the amount of certain soybean meal antinutritional factors in feed, such as a trypsin
inhibitors, not only affects protein digestibility but also affects gut health (e.g. incidence of sub-clinical necrotic enteritis) in the
flock (Palliyeguru et al., 2011).

As the birds get older, the gut microbiota is more stable. However, in young chickens, the microbiota is not yet fully stable
(Shang et al., 2018). An influx of undigested nutrients from the small intestine may cause a proliferation of non-beneficial
bacteria (Apajalahti and Vienola, 2016). Ensuring the lowest possible trypsin-inhibitor activity in chicken diets is a valuable tool to improve the gut health and welfare of birds.

Effect of dietary trypsin inhibitor activity (TIA, mg/g of diet) on protein digestibility and necrotic enteritis lesion score in chickens
(32 days).

In broilers fed a 10-day corn or wheat-based starter diet with 5% HP AviStart, villi height:crypt depth ratio (VH:CD) was seen to
increase. A strong correlation (r² = 0.81) was observed between VH:CD and apparent ileal protein digestibility (Iji and Swick, 2014)

Another study showed a significant correlation (r² = 0.96, p = 0.009) between a well-developed gut and improved FCR
(Unpublished data, Nong Lam University, Vietnam, 2016). Compared to a control starter diet, VH:CD also benefited from a
carry-over effect when the starter diet contained HP AviStart (Thieu et al., 2017).

Carry over effect on VH:CD after feeding HP AviStart in the starter diet

HP AviStart is a reliable protein source to improve gut health, reduce litter moisture and footpad dermatitis incidence

Better intestinal health and gut development in chickens will result in lower incidence of wet litter and, consequently, lower
incidence in pododermatitis, as observed in a study where HP AviStart replaced different protein sources in starter diets for
chickens (Bjedvov et al., 2015).