Multidimensional welfare profiling of broiler leg health under probiotic or antimicrobial growth-promoter supplementation and environmental enrichment

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ID: 328468
2026
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Abstract
Broiler leg health is a complex and multidimensional welfare concern that may be inadequately characterized using isolated indicators. This study developed an individual-level multidimensional welfare-response profiling framework to evaluate broilers subjected to 3 dietary strategies-negative control, zinc bacitracin as an antimicrobial growth promoter (AGP), or a multi-strain probiotic-combined with environmental enrichment in a 3 × 2 factorial experiment involving 1,440 male broilers housed in 48 pens. Welfare outcomes were organized into 5 biological domains: locomotor performance, skeletal mineralization, postural deformity, cartilage and joint disorders, and spinal and muscular disorders. Outcomes were directionally harmonized and normalized to a 0-1 scale, with greater values consistently representing a more favorable welfare response, before aggregation into domain-specific scores and a global welfare-response index. Mixed-effects models included dietary additive, environmental enrichment, and their interaction as fixed effects and pen as a random effect to account for clustering within the experimental unit. The global welfare-response index ranged from 0.727 ± 0.022 for the control with enrichment to 0.759 ± 0.013 for the control without enrichment. No significant effects of dietary additive (P = 0.599), environmental enrichment (P = 0.207), or their interaction (P = 0.715) were detected for the global index. At the domain level, probiotic supplementation with enrichment produced the greatest numerical skeletal-mineralization score (0.631 ± 0.026), but neither dietary additive (P = 0.150), enrichment (P = 0.933), nor their interaction (P = 0.758) significantly affected this domain. The additive × enrichment interaction for postural deformity showed a tendency (P = 0.073), whereas no significant effects were detected for the locomotor, cartilage/joint, or spinal/muscular domains (P > 0.05). Sensitivity analyses using alternative domain-weighting scenarios showed that treatment rankings varied with welfare priorities, reinforcing that the composite index should be interpreted together with domain-specific outcomes. Overall, probiotic-supplemented groups showed global leg-health welfare profiles within the range observed for the zinc-bacitracin groups, while treatment responses were primarily domain-specific rather than consistently expressed across the integrated welfare profile.
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Authors Lorraine Aline Barbosa de Lima, Caio César dos Ouros, Maria Eliza Ribeiro da Silva, Letícia Cuer Garcia, Elivelton de Salles da Silveira, Maria Fernanda de Castro Burbarelli, Cláudia Marie Komiyama, Irenilza de Alencar Nääs, Jaqueline Murback Braz, Agnês Markiy Odakura, Rodrigo Garófallo Garcia, Fabiana Ribeiro Caldara
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Journal italian journal of animal science
Year 2026
DOI
10.1093/jas/skag293
URL
https://doi.org/10.1093/jas/skag293
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