Idrus Zulkifli

This study examined the effects of housing system and dietary mannan oligosaccharides (MOS) on growth performance, serum corticosterone (CORT), and selected caecal bacterial populations in broiler chickens exposed to road transportation under humid tropical conditions. A total of 440 one-day-old male Cobb 500 chicks were assigned to a 2 × 2 factorial arrangement involving naturally ventilated (NVH) or mechanically ventilated housing (MVH) and a control diet or the same diet supplemented with MOS at 2.0 g/kg. On day 42, separate groups of birds were sampled before transport or after 4 h of road transportation. Broilers reared in MVH had greater final body weight and better feed conversion than those reared in NVH. MOS supplementation also improved final body weight and feed conversion ratio. Transportation increased serum CORT concentrations, while birds reared in MVH and those fed MOS had lower overall CORT concentrations. No significant interactions were detected among housing system, diet, and sampling time for CORT. Housing system also affected selected caecal bacterial populations, with lower Clostridium spp. and higher Lactobacillus spp. counts in MVH birds. MOS supplementation and transportation did not significantly affect the measured bacterial populations. These findings indicate that housing environment and MOS supplementation mainly influenced broiler performance and physiological status independently under humid tropical conditions, while short-term transportation increased CORT without measurable changes in the selected caecal bacterial populations.

Road transportation exposes broiler chickens to multiple stressors, particularly in hot, humid tropical conditions. This study examined whether prenatal and neo

This study investigated whether exposure to multimodal early-life stress modifies physiological stress responses, fear behaviour and selected caecal bacterial populations in Pekin and Muscovy ducks subjected to road transportation under tropical conditions. A total of 416 male ducklings (Pekin, n = 208; Muscovy, n = 208) were assigned to early-stress (ES) or no early-stress (NES) treatments from days 3 to 14. Early-stressed ducks were exposed daily for 3 h to a combination of crating, mild cold (24 ± 1°C), noise (100 dB), and darkness. On day 42, ducks were either transported for 3 h or remained in their home pens. We evaluated serum corticosterone (CORT) and heat shock protein 70 (HSP70) levels, tonic immobility (TI) responses, selected caecal bacterial populations, and growth performance. Early-life stress did not affect growth performance, feed efficiency or mortality. Muscovy ducks exhibited longer TI duration and required fewer inductions than Pekin ducks, suggesting that different breeds respond differently to fear, whereas early-life stress and transportation did not affect underlying fearfulness. CORT responses to transportation were strongly breed-dependent. Pekin ducks showed higher corticosterone concentrations than Muscovy ducks, and early-stressed Pekin ducks exhibited lower CORT following transportation compared with non-early-stressed transported ducks. In contrast, early-life stress had little effect on CORT responses in Muscovy ducks. Heat shock protein 70 was not influenced by early-life stress or transportation. Ducks that were not exposed to early-life stress and were subsequently transported showed the lowest caecal Lactobacillus spp. counts. The results suggest that early-life stress across multiple modalities can reduce physiological stress responses triggered by transportation and promote gut microbial stability in Pekin ducks while maintaining their performance. In contrast, Muscovy ducks show minimal additional advantages, underscoring the breed-specific responses to early-life conditioning strategies.

Objective: The objective of the study was to determine the effects of prenatal auditory stimulation (PAS) on serum concentrations of heat shock protein 70 (HSP70), ceruloplasmin (CPN), alpha-1-acid-glycoprotein (AGP), corticosterone (CORT), ovotransferrin (OVT), and dopamine (DA) in duck embryos and hatchlings.Methods: Fertilized Khaki Campbell duck eggs were subjected to the following auditory stimulation treatments: 1) no supplementary sound treatment other than the background sound of the incubator's compressors at 40 dB (CONTROL), 2) exposure to pre-recorded traffic noise at 90 dB (NOISE), and 3) exposure to Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, K 488 at 90 dB (MUSIC). The NOISE and MUSIC treatments were lasted for 20 min per hours over a 24 h (a total of 8 h/d), starting from embryonic days (ED) 13 to hatching. PAS did not influence hatchability rate, body weights at ED 21 and post-hatch day (PH) 1.Results: The MUSIC and NOISE treatments elevated HSP70 at ED21 compared to the Control, while opposite results were observed at post-hatch day 1 (PH1). The AGP, CPN and CORT were not significantly (p>0.05) affected by PAS at ED21. However, at PH1, the Control ducklings showed significantly higher OVT and AGP. The NOISE and MUSIC treatments reduced DA activity in ED21 and PH1, respectively.Conclusion: PAS induces a physiological stress response in embryos without affecting hatchability or the weights of hatchling. Exposure to MUSIC and NOISE modulates stress-related physiological markers during incubation and hatching, hence enhancing stress resilience in day-old ducklings.

This study evaluates four machine learning algorithms: Gaussian Exponential Regression (GER), Feedforward Neural Networks (FFNN), Support Vector Machines (SVM), and Decision Trees (DT) for predicting body weight in chickens with different growth rates (slow-, medium-, and fast-growing breeds). It fills a major research gap by benchmarking these models under uniform conditions across multiple growth categories. Starting at 14 days of age, 300 male chicks (100 of the genotypes SAGA, Sasso, and Cobb 500, which represent slow-, medium-, and fast-growing breeds, respectively) were used in a controlled experiment. Weekly body weight and six (6) morphometric traits were recorded for four weeks and split into training (75%) and validation (25%) sets. A total of 2,160 data records were obtained from weekly morphometric measurements across 300 birds. Model performance was measured by correlation coefficient (R), coefficient of determination (R²), root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE). Across all growth groups, GER consistently performed better than other models, exhibiting the highest accuracy and lowest errors. FFNN performed well for slow- and medium-growing breeds but showed increased errors for fast-growing Cobb 500. SVM and DT had the poorest results, with higher errors and poor generalizability. Model accuracy was ranked as follows: GER > FFNN > DT/SVM. This study provides recommendations for selecting machine learning models tailored to specific chicken growth rates for accurate weight prediction. Future work should validate these findings on commercial farms and explore hybrid models to improve robustness. GER’s superior performance highlights its potential as a reliable and efficient tool for precision poultry farming.