Impact of Probiotics on Dairy Production Efficiency

Abstract

There has been growing interest on probiotics to enhance weight gain and disease resistance in young calves and to improve the milk yield in lactating animals by reducing the negative energy balance during the peak lactation period. While it has been well established that probiotics modulate the microbial community composition in the gastrointestinal tract, and a probiotic-mediated homeostasis in the rumen could improve feed conversation competence, volatile fatty acid production and nitrogen flow that enhances the milk composition as well as milk production, detailed changes on the molecular and metabolic level prompted by probiotic feed additives are still not understood. Moreover, as living biotherapeutic agents, probiotics have the potential to directly change the gene expression profile of animals by activating the signalling cascade in the host cells. Various direct and indirect components of probiotic approaches to improve the productivity of dairy animals are discussed in this review.

Keywords: biotherapeutics; dairy production; feed supplements; gut microbiome; probiotics.

Figure 1

Impact of probiotics on the general health of dairy animals.

Figure 2

Probiotic activity to enhance the growth and general health of dairy animals. Yellow arrows in the figure indicate enzymatic digestion of feed in the gut; blue arrows indicate microbial fermentation of feed-derived monosaccharides; white arrows indicate the different beneficial mechanisms of probiotics, and the dotted red arrow indicates the VFA-mediated growth promotion of colonocytes.

Figure 3

Effect of probiotics to improve milk productivity in dairy animals. (−) Sign indicates inhibition, (+) sign indicates enhancement, MCP: microbial crude protein, SNF: slid not fat, VFA: volatile fatty acid.