All-Natural Chitosan: Good for Chickens and Egg Production!
Chitosan, a natural and effective shrimp, crab and lobster shell extract, has been proven to be a great multi-purpose tool for gardeners, farmers, homesteaders, and… anyone who owns a chicken!!
- Incorporating chitosan into chicken feed improves production traits, such as egg quality, egg yolk composition, immunity and intestinal bacteria
- Chitosan has antibacterial effects and also acts as a chicken growth promoter!
- Supplementation of chitosan in broiler diets could reduce need for antibiotics, and create resistance to some bird viruses
- Chitosan improves gut function in chickens by increasing nutrient availability and reducing inflammation
Benefits of Chitosan in Agriculture
- The presence of chitosan encourages beneficial microbes, such as nitrogen-fixing bacteria and mycorrhizal fungi, which can improve soil fertility and structure.
- Chitosan has been proven to increase yields of crops like wheat, corn, pepper, tomato and soybean by up to 20%.
- Chitosan acts as a protective barrier on plant surfaces by forming a film that prevents fungal growth and disease-causing organisms.
Links to Published Studies: Effects of chitosan on broiler chickens
Chitosan Oligosaccharide 100 mg kg-1 in feed rations improved the performance of broilers with the highest yield compared to other treatments. The addition of 100 mg kg-1 of Chitosan Oligosaccharide had a positive effect on increasing feed intake, BW, BWG, and significantly reduced FCR (P <0.05) in starter phase and had a positive effect on increasing feed intake, BW, BWG, and decreasing FCR until end of maintenance. These results are consistent with the observations of Huang et al. [2] reported that supplementation of 100 mg kg-1 of COS in broilers was able to increase nutrient digestibility in the ileum and daily body weight gain which was as effective as the addition of AGP. Moreover, COS can stimulate the secretion of digestive enzymes derived from the stomach, pancreas, and intestinal mucosa [10]. In order to, this effect is expected to reduce local inflammation in the intestinal mucosa, facilitate modification of complex molecules to be simpler, and improve the integrity of enterocytes, thereby supporting nutrient digestibility and absorption