Potential and challenges of tannins as an alternative to in-feed antibiotics for farm animal production

Huang, Qianqian; Liu, Xiuli; Zhao, Guoqi; Hu, Tianming; Wang, Yuxi

Supplementations of chestnut HT at levels of 0.45% and 0.5% also have been shown to increase live weight gain and feed intake of rabbits (Maertens and Struklec, 2006; Zoccarato et al., 2008) . However, Liu et al. (2009) found that inclusion of chestnut HT at the concentrations of 0.5% and 1.0% had no effect on growth performance of rabbits. All above information suggest that depending on the type of animals and the type of diets, dietary addition of chestnut HT at the levels lower than 0.5% for swine and rabbit and lower than 0.2% for chicken may have positive effects on their growth performance and improve intestinal health. Higher chestnut HT concentration in the diets than the above mentioned will mostly lead to decreased animal growth performance by decreasing nutrient digestion and absorption (Iji et al., 2004; Ebadi et al., 2005; Mansoori, 2009; Mansoori et al., 2015) .