The next frontier in poultry gut health – Why timing may matter more than ever

Modern poultry production requires more than supporting gut health. The next step is understanding how the microbiome develops over time and applying the right intervention at the right moment. Precision microbiome management offers a new pathway to improve efficiency, resilience, and profitability.

GUT HEALTH REMAINS AT THE CENTER OF POULTRY
PERFORMANCE
The poultry industry continues to face significant challenges. Producers must improve feed efficiency, maintain bird health, reduce antibiotic reliance, and meet growing demand for affordable animal protein. As a result, gut health has become a central focus of modern poultry production.

Over the past two decades, the industry has achieved major progress through enzymes, organic acids, probiotics, phytogenics, and other nutritional technologies. These solutions have helped producers support digestion, control pathogens, and improve overall flock performance.

Yet despite these advances, many gut health programs still rely on a relatively static approach. Products are often selected based on broad performance objectives and applied throughout production with limited consideration of how the intestinal ecosystem changes over time.

Today, emerging microbiome science is challenging that model.

FROM GUT HEALTH TO MICROBIOME MANAGEMENT
The poultry gut contains a complex ecosystem of bacteria, fungi, viruses, and other microorganisms. Together, these microbes influence nutrient digestion, immune function, intestinal integrity, and resistance to disease. Research has consistently shown that birds with a balanced microbiome generally achieve better health and production outcomes. However, the microbiome is not a fixed entity. It is highly dynamic and continuously evolves throughout the bird’s life.

New microbiome studies show that microbial development follows a succession process. Shortly after hatch, the gut is dominated by relatively simple microbial communities. Beneficial lactate-producing bacteria become established during the first week, creating conditions that support the development of short-chain fatty acid-producing bacteria later in life. These microbial groups contribute to gut maturation, pathogen control, and nutrient utilization.

Importantly, high-performing flocks often demonstrate faster microbiome maturation and earlier stabilization than lower-performing flocks. This finding has significant implications for poultry nutrition.

THE IMPORTANCE OF MICROBIOME TIMING
The next evolution of gut health innovation may not be simply identifying new additives. Instead, it may involve understanding precisely when specific interventions can deliver the greatest impact.

A chick on day one has very different biological needs than a bird at day 21 or day 35. The microbiome at each stage performs different functions and faces different risks.

During the first days after hatch, the priority is establishing a beneficial microbial community and limiting opportunistic pathogens. In later phases, the focus shifts toward supporting microbial stability, nutrient utilization, and resilience against production stressors.

This concept is often referred to as microbiome timing: aligning nutritional interventions with the natural development of the gut ecosystem. Rather than asking, “What product should I use?” the future question may be, “What does the microbiome need at this specific moment?”

The concept of microbiome timing is already influencing the design of next-generation feed additives. Rather than simply supporting gut health in a general sense, new solutions are increasingly being developed to address specific stages of microbiome development. Biostrong Dual™ is one example of this evolution. By combining postbiotics and phytogenics, it was developed to support accelerated microbiota maturation and improved nutrient utilization during key phases of broiler growth. This approach reflects a broader industry shift toward precision nutrition, where understanding how and when the microbiome develops becomes as important as the nutritional intervention itself.

EARLY-LIFE PROGRAMMING CREATES LONG-TERM EFFECTS
The strongest evidence for microbiome timing comes from early-life development. Microbial colonization begins immediately after hatch and is influenced by hatchery conditions, transportation, feed access, water quality, farm environment, and management practices. The microbial communities established during these first days can have lasting consequences for bird performance.

Disruptions during this period can slow microbiome maturation and increase the risk of dysbiosis. Delayed feed access, poor chick quality, inappropriate antibiotic use, or biosecurity challenges may reduce populations of beneficial bacteria while allowing undesirable microbes to proliferate. For this reason, future gut health programs are likely to place greater emphasis on supporting microbiome development from the earliest stages of life.

The objective is not simply to react to gut health issues. It is to proactively guide microbiome maturation before problems emerge.

PRECISION NUTRITION MEETS MICROBIOME INTELLIGENCE
Another important trend is the integration of microbiome data with nutritional decision making. Advances in sequencing technologies, artificial intelligence, and predictive analytics now allow for deeper insights into microbial communities than ever before. New diagnostic platforms can identify microbial patterns associated with performance outcomes and highlight deviations from desirable development trajectories. This capability creates new opportunities for precision nutrition.

Instead of applying the same nutritional strategy to every flock, producers may increasingly use microbiome information to tailor interventions according to flock needs, production stage, and environmental conditions. In this new paradigm, feed additives are no longer viewed simply as tools to address general gut health challenges. Rather, they become targeted interventions that support specific microbiome functions at specific moments in production.

This is where next-generation solutions such as the Biostrong® portfolio can play an increasingly important role. By leveraging complementary modes of action, Biostrong products are designed to help producers influence gut functionality, microbial development, and nutrient utilization in a more targeted manner. Biostrong Dual™, for example, combines phytogenics and postbiotics to support microbiome maturation and digestive efficiency, making it particularly relevant in precision nutrition strategies where timing and biological context matter as much as ingredient selection. Such an approach has the potential to improve consistency while maximizing the value of existing nutritional technologies.

THE FUTURE IS INTEGRATED
The next generation of gut health programs will likely be more integrated than product-focused. Successful microbiome management requires a combination of nutrition, health, management, biosecurity, and environmental control. No single additive can fully shape microbiome development on its own.

However, nutritional technologies remain an essential component of this integrated approach. Products increasingly need to work within a broader management strategy while addressing multiple biological objectives simultaneously. This evolution is reflected in solutions such as the Biostrong® portfolio, which has been developed to support gut functionality, feed efficiency, resilience, and microbiome development as part of a comprehensive flock management program.

Future strategies may combine:
• Early-life microbiome programming
• Targeted nutritional interventions
• Precision feed formulation
• Microbiome monitoring tools
• Predictive analytics
• Improved management practices

Within these integrated systems, feed additives such as Biostrong Dual™ can serve as practical tools to translate microbiome insights into nutritional action. As microbiome monitoring and predictive analytics become more accessible, nutritionists will increasingly require solutions that can be deployed at specific biological windows to guide microbial succession and support optimal performance outcomes.

LOOKING AHEAD
The poultry industry has entered a new era of gut health innovation. The first generation focused on supporting intestinal function. The second generation introduced tools to influence microbial populations. The next generation will leverage microbiome intelligence to understand biological timing and apply interventions with greater precision. This evolution represents a shift from generalized gut health management toward individualized microbiome stewardship.

As microbiome science continues to advance, nutritionists will increasingly move from reactive intervention toward proactive microbiome guidance. The ability to identify critical developmental windows and apply targeted nutritional solutions at the right time could become a major competitive advantage for poultry producers.

In that future, feed additive programs will not be judged only by their ingredients or modes of action, but by their ability to support specific biological outcomes throughout the production cycle. Solutions such as Biostrong Dual™ illustrate this transition, combining complementary technologies that help align nutritional intervention with microbiome development and flock needs.

As our understanding of microbial succession, maturation, and functionality continues to grow, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: the future of poultry performance may depend not only on what we feed birds, but also on when we support the microbiome during its journey from hatch to harvest.

About Yann Fournis
Yann Fournis is Additives Poultry Category Lead for CAN, the animal nutrition division of Cargill. He has held this position since January 2018. In his current role, he is responsible for the deployment of three additives portfolios within Cargill Animal Nutrition businesses, and contributes to the innovation with Cargill partners to find new solutions able to answer customers’ expectations.
Fournis graduated as a zootechnical engineer in 2011 from AgroCampus Ouest in France, with a main focus on animal production. From 2011 to 2018, he worked as a layer nutritionist in Cargill France, serving both domestic and export markets. In 2016, he focused on layer nutrition and management, working with on-farm mixers and feed millers in France, Sub-Saharian Africa and Latin America.

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