Trade-off between feed efficiency and immunity in specialized high-performing chickens

Based on resource allocation theory, ignoring importance of immunity, and focus on growth and feed efficiency (FE) traits in breeding plans may lead to serious weakness in immune system performance. However, in poultry the adverse effects of selection for FE on the immune system are unclear. Therefore, an experiment was conducted to study the trade-off between FE and immunity using a total of 180 high-performing specialized male chickens from a commercial broiler line which were selected over 30 generations for growth (body weight gain, BWG) and FE (residual feed intake, RFI). Birds were reared for 42 d and 5 FE-related traits of the birds in the last week were considered including daily feed intake (DFI), feed conversion ratio (FCR), residual feed intake (RFI), residual BW gain (RG), and residual intake and gain (RIG). For all 180 chickens, immune system performance including humoral immune response, cell-mediated immunity (CMI), and the activity of lysozyme enzyme (L. activity) as innate immunity was measured. After ascending sort of each FE records, 10% of higher records (H-FE: N = 18) and 10% of lower records (L-FE: N = 18) were determined, and immunity between L-FE and H-FE groups were compared. Moreover, L-BWG and H-BWG were analyzed because BWG is one of components in the FE formula. Performance of the immune system was not statistically different for CMI in none of the studied FE groups. Moreover, high and low groups for DFI and BWG were not different regarding the immunity of the birds. Antibody titers against Newcastle disease virus (NDV) were different between low and high groups of FCR, RG, and RIG. Likewise, SRBC-derived antibodies were significantly different between RFI groups. Rather than humoral immunity, RIG had adversely effect on the innate immunity. Results of the present study showed that although RIG is a more appropriate indicator for FE, choosing for high RIG can weaken the performance of the both humoral and innate immune systems, while RFI had fewer adverse effects.