Bacillus lentus is an aerobic, gram positive rod shaped bacteria. The optimal growth temperature is between 10°C to 35°C in alkaline medium of pH 6-9
Health benefits in poultry with mechanism of action
1. Improves digestion
Bacillus lentus is known to produce many enzymes like Alpha-amylase, beta- glucanase, hemicellulose, xylanase, protese (subtilisin) which aids in digestion. Also, these enzymes from B. lentus are permitted for use in livestock. Alkaline Phosphatase prepared from Paenibacillus lentus (previously known as Bacillus lentus) is prepared for use in poultry feeds for use in the hydrolysis of phosphate monoesters in grain products, animal protein products, and plant protein products such as corn meal, animal by-product meal, soybean meal, and sunflower meal.
Beta-mannanase is known to improve productive performance when added to poultry and swine diets. It can be widely used in a variety of feed to improve nutrient digestibility and animal production performance to increase economic efficiency. Another such results were observed where beta-mannanase enzyme showed significantly efficient results in chciks challenged with Eimerla sp and Clostridium perfringens. Hemicall is a feed enzyme produced by a strain of Bacillus lentus contains a minimum of 7.2 x 108 U L-1 of β-D-mannanase activity and shows significant improvements in animal performance in chickens for fattening at a recommended dose of 79200 U kg-1.
Protease consistently improves the digestion of amino acids, thus reducing their inclusion level in feed while maintaining current levels of animal performance, is therefore economically very attractive. The exogenous protease works in synergy with endogenous enzymes to obtain the optimum benefit in all and higher in very young bird, where endogenous levels may be limiting.
2. Inhibits pathogens
Bacteriocin produced from Bacillus lentus was observed to have strong antimicrobial activity against most challenging and serious test indicators like Listeria monocytogens and Staphylococcus aureus. There was a drastic decrease up to 70% in viable cells of the indicators within the first 10 h of adding partially purified bacteriocin thus proving its bactericidal action.
3. Enhances growth
Broiler chicks on supplementation with alpha-amylase were observed to grow faster and had better feed conversion ratio.