Free range chickens and the importance of their intestinal microbiome

In addition, Sossidou et al.  (2011, 2015) noted that there may be benefits for animal welfare and lower nutritional requirements for slow-growing breeds in grasslands vs. fast-growing breeds under these same conditions.

Food safety concerns have also been considered with broiler production in the wild. The main foodborne pathogens associated with poultry are Campylobacter and Salmonella

The colonization route of foodborne pathogens in the gastrointestinal(GI) tract and systemic invasion is presumably similar to what occurs in conventional poultry (Shi et al. , 2019). This certainly depends on host factors, such as intermittent dietary intake which is potentially experienced in free range grazing.

Since antibiotics are generally excluded in free range production, the occurence of antibiotic resistance in microorganisms isolated from birds produced under these conditions would presumably be less frequent.

Factors such as:

Diet

Race

The age of birds

And housing conditions

may exhibit a potential influence on the development of the GI tract microbial consortium in broilers.

These types of dietary differences between conventionally raised broilers and “Free Range” chickens may also have a distinctive influence on the respective GI tract microbiota.

Age can affect the diversity of the gut microbiome in poultry, even when diet does not.

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