Abstract
Regarding the antibacterial and antioxidant properties of Gallic acid (GA), it was used as feed additive to evaluate intestinal health and production performance of broilers. Yellow-feathered male broilers (375 birds at 21-day-old) with similar body weight were randomly divided into five groups, each with five replicates and 15 chickens per replicate. Chickens were fed basal diet with 0, 50, 100, 150, and 200 mg/kg GA for 42 days. Then, chickens were slaughtered for slaughter performance, intestinal function, gut microbiota measurement. Compared to the control group, supplementation with 150 mg/kg GA significantly increased body weight at 42, 56, and 63 days of age (P < 0.05), significantly increased average daily gain (ADG) and reduced feed conversion ratio (FCR) during the growth phase (P < 0.05), and increased abundances of Firmicutes and decreased abundances of Bacteroidetes (P < 0.05). Supplementation with both 100 and 150 mg/kg GA significantly decreased abdominal fat rate and increased breast muscle rate (P < 0.05), and enhanced expression of IL-1β, TNF-a, TLR4, HSP70, mucin2 and Nrf2 (P < 0.05). In conclusion, GA (150 mg/kg) was associated with improved growth and slaughter performance and with changes in intestinal gene expression and cecal microbiota compositions.
Data availability
The raw sequencing data generated in this study had been deposited in the Genome Sequence Archive (GSA) at the China National Center for Bioinformation/National Genomics Data Center (CNCB-NGDC) under accession number CRA024363. These data were publicly accessible at https://bigd.big.ac.cn/gsa/browse/CRA024363.
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The authors are grateful to all the students for their help with the fieldwork.
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This work was financed by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32202659) and Anhui Provincial Science and Technology Innovation Tackling Plan Project (202423110050055).
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YD wrote the main manuscript text, XL do statistic and prepared figure, LG and CZ collected data, DS for bird rearing, XC revised the manuscript. All authors reviewed the manuscript.
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Du, Y., Guo, L., Lang, X. et al. Dietary gallic acid facilitate growth performance, improve slaughter performance through enhanced intestinal function in yellow-feathered broiler. Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-38753-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-38753-8
