Diet is one of the most powerful levers for keeping pigs and poultry healthy, resilient, and productive.
Our research focus with Nutrition for Optimizing Animal Health (NOAH) is to study the complex interplay between a stable microbiota, intestinal function, and a maturing immune system in young animals. Because disease-challenged animals eat less and shift their metabolism in costly ways, we test how nutritional technologies influence growth, immunity, and gut function — and how nutrient requirements change when livestock face respiratory and enteric infections.
Nutritional immunology and disease resilience
We evaluate dietary bioactives and feeding strategies that help pigs and poultry withstand enteric and respiratory disease challenges — supporting immune function, gut integrity, and performance under infection.
- A review on the effect of soy bioactive components on growth and health outcomes in pigs and broiler chickens
- Dietary monoglyceride supplementation to support intestinal integrity and host defenses in health-challenged weanling pigs
- Dietary soy isoflavones reduce pathogen-related mortality in growing pigs under porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome viral challenge
- Effects of methylsulfonylmethane and neutralizing anti–IL-10 antibody supplementation during a mild Eimeria challenge infection in broiler chickens
- Effects of dietary saponin and polyphenol supplementation in broiler chickens exposed to multiple mild stressors of cyclic elevated ambient temperature, feed withdrawal, and coccidiosis infection
Precision nutrition: amino acids, energy, and minerals
We define nutrient requirements and evaluate feed enzymes that improve growth efficiency, energy use, and bone health — including how those requirements shift when animals are under disease challenge.
- Effects of a coccidiosis challenge on dietary methionine recommendations in broilers
- Assessment of digestible lysine requirements in lipopolysaccharide-challenged pigs
- Effects of phytase supplementation and increased nutrient density on growth performance, carcass characteristics, and hypothalamic appetitive hormone expression and catecholamine concentrations in broilers from 1 to 43 days of age
- Defining optimal dietary starch, oil, and amino acid inclusion levels for broilers experiencing a coccidiosis challenge
- Effects of Eimeria acervulina infection severity on growth performance, apparent ileal amino acid digestibility, and plasma concentrations of amino acids, carotenoids, and alpha1-acid glycoprotein in broilers
Gut health, fiber, and the microbiome
We test fibers, oligosaccharides, and gut-targeted compounds that shape the microbiome, fermentation, and intestinal barrier function across species.
- The role of oligosaccharides and polysaccharides of xylan and mannan in gut health of monogastric animals
- Xylanase supplementation of pelleted wheat-based diets increases growth efficiency and apparent metabolizable energy and decreases viscosity of intestinal contents in broilers
- Alterations of fecal microbiome characteristics by dietary soy isoflavone ingestion in growing pigs infected with porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus
- Organ growth and fermentation profiles of broilers differing in body growth rate
- The dual sugar test (lactulose plus mannitol) is an unreliable indicator of feed withdrawal-associated changes in intestinal permeability in broiler chickens