Water & broiler

Two types of drinking water were provided for broiler chicks in this study to evaluate the effects of bacterial load of drinking water on intestinal microbiota by 16S rRNA technique. One kind of drinking water is normal drinking water. Another kind of drinking water is daily treated with sodium dichlorocyanurate (50 mg/L). A total of 240 broiler chicks were divided into two groups according to the type of drinking water and were assigned to different replication layers based on replication. On the last day, water samples were taken from each replication layer at the opening of the drinking cup height and a bird was selected from each replication to obtain cecal content sample for measuring microbiota composition by 16S rRNA technique. We found that drinking water treated with sodium dichlorocyanurate significantly reduced the richness and diversity of microbiota, most gram-negative bacteria were diminished/disappeared. Broiler chicks drank chlorinated drinking water changed the composition of cecal microbiota, Alistipes served as the marker species of cecal content from broiler chicks drank normal water, whereas AF12 served as the marker species of cecal content from broiler chicks drank chlorinated drinking water. Function prediction using the MetaCyc database and species composition analysis of metabolic pathways showed that the changes of 7 metabolic pathways were related to the abundance of Providencia. Therefore, we concluded that chlorinated drinking water reduced bacterial load of drinking water, and therefore altered the cecal microbiota composition and regulated the metabolic activity of broiler chicks.