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Chicken Probiotics?

Just a quick post here on an NPR story that caught my attention “Giving Chickens Bacteria … To Keep Them Antibiotic-Free”.  Unlike with humans where determining the effect of probiotics is complicated by a lot of variation in the population (genetic, cultural, diet, etc.), with a whole bunch of chickens it’s easier to measure the effects.  And, according to this story, they do have a beneficial effect and can significantly reduce antibiotic usuage by the farmer which is pretty much a win for everybody.   Would love to see more of this kind of work… as well as some hard data.

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David Coil

David Coil is a Project Scientist in the lab of Jonathan Eisen at UC Davis. David works at the intersection between research, education, and outreach in the areas of the microbiology of the built environment, microbial ecology, and bacterial genomics. Twitter

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