The Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI), belonging to the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, has approved, at its meeting held on 31/03/2016, the granting of a partially reimbursable aid of up to 399,556.86 € to Explotaciones Avícolas J.L. Redondo, S.A. for the implementation of the Research and Development project IDI-20160018 called “Design of supplementation programmes using gels for 1-day-old chicks”. This aid is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Multi-regional Operational Programme for Intelligent Growth.

The technical objective of the project is to design a new nutritional supplementation programme through the inclusion of immunomodulators and intestinal microbiota regulators for application in day-old chicks. To this end, a 24-month work plan was implemented during 2016 and 2017, during which seven experimental trials were carried out to evaluate nutritional supplementation in the hatchery with compounds with immunomodulatory function and/or regulators of the intestinal microbiota, and their combination with nutritional strategies during fattening on mortality, intestinal microbiota, productivity and carcass quality.

The results obtained in these trials have led to the conclusion that the administration of an immunomodulator in the hatchery by spraying gels, consisting of vitamin complexes plus amino acids, reduces mortality on the farm, mainly during the first week of life, associated with an improvement in the intestinal health index at three weeks of life.