Publications by authors named "R Gonzalez-Esquerra"

Background: Swine production expanded in the last decades. Efforts have been made to improve meat production and to understand its relationship to pig gut microbiota. Copper (Cu) is a usual supplement to growth performance in animal production.

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The aim of this study was to see how spray-dried plasma (SDP) supplementation affected broiler chicken performance, intestinal permeability, and bone strength during persistent heat stress. One-day-old chicks ( = 480) were randomly assigned into twelve environmental corrals; four thermoneutral (TN-negative control, maintained at 24 °C from d 21-42); four heat stress (HS, exposed to 35 °C from d 21-42); and four heat stress treated with 2% SDP in the feed until d 28 followed by 1% SDP until d 42 (HS-SDP). The performance and serum levels of fluorescein isothiocyanate-dextran (FITC-d) were evaluated at d 21, 28, 35, and 42.

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The effect of feeding spray-dried plasma (SDP) during the starter period was evaluated with a commercial broiler integrator on performance and overall health of broilers. The I See Inside (ISI) methodology assessing gut health in broilers was used as a tool to evaluate the impact of dietary interventions under commercial conditions. One hundred farms with approximately 1.

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Two performance studies were conducted to investigate the effects of 3 different sources of Cu on production parameters of piglets. A total of 256 piglets weaned at 24 ± 2 d were randomly allocated into 4 treatments with 10 or 8 replicates per treatment of 4 or 3 piglets per pen in Exp. 1 and 2, respectively.

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Spray-dried plasma (SDP) is a functional ingredient commonly utilized in swine production and calf milk replacers to improve performance, feed efficiency, and health. The improvements noted with SDP in animal production are more pronounced under commercial production conditions compared to cleaner research settings. Multiple modes of action of SDP have been proposed, including either directly influencing the immune inflammatory response locally or systemically, and/or through the indirect modification of beneficial microbial populations.

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