The digestive apparatus - the digestive flora
The digestive routes of the birds, as well as those of the mammals, they lodge a microbiological flora hard. In the birds, one has frequently studied the flora of the hens and the chicks. This it is in fact a profitable animal and the investigations on its digestive system, have had as it puts, the reduction of the production costs. Although the digestive system of the hen, difference of the one of the dove (the dove has in contrast to the hen, single two rudimentary blind coats), can be extrapolated some Of this form, the digestive microflora can be divided in three groups:
·A flora, that can be denominated like dominant, because it is 90% of the total flora. Among them is specially the Lactobacilos.
·A flora, which is not "dominant" and single he is 1% of the total population. In her we found, among others, to Escherichia coli and the Estreptococos.
·Flora, that is rest, because the values of the population in tracto digestive are 1/10,000 and among them they are the leavenings (Candida), fungi and inclusively bacteria, that have a determined force, to cause disease.
These are general animal determinations different, are individual variations, specially because determined bacteria they have not been possible to determine. This flora, which practically lives in a free oxygen atmosphere, forms the digestive ecosystem. For her survival, she uses the nutrients that there are in the digestive routes and are certain, by different factors. So that the bacteria that acquire themselves to the birth, are those that have the greater opportunity, of colon

This digestive ecosystem is in balance and normally remains constant, during all the life of an adult animal. But this balance can be disturbed, when the bird undergoes aggressions: nutricionales stress, imbalances, massive antibiotic provision and substances that disturb the value of pH of the intestine (salts of the bath, among others). In these cases, it is reduced to the resistance to bacteria and certain bacteria, like for example the Escherichia coli, which single delay, can get to be active. Then, the factors that disturb the balance of the intestinal flora, have a repercussion in the health of the animal.
As conclusions can be said, that the digestive microflora protects against infections and that certain fault in the balance of the populations of microorganisms in the digestive system, can be responsible for a diminution in the resistance. This is for example the case, in the industrial production of birds, which moves away of the natural conditions and break that balance.
It is had by this, immediately begins the birth of new doves, to foment the formation of a protective and useful intestinal flora. For that reason we avoided, before and during the reproduction, the provision frequents and unnecessary of antibiotics and antiseptics. When the treatments are necessarily indispensable, then we must allow, who the intestinal flora, first of all the one that is very important for the dove, as is it the one of the crop, is possible to be recovered before the mating.
The massive antibiotic use can be said definitively, that in the reproducers, has an indirect negative effect, in the future generations.
This is perhaps an explanation, by which some colombófilos never are successful, inclusively when they gather eggs, of famous colombófilos.
By: Ing. Duchatel J. P.
Taken from the magazine "gut Flug", published June 1,978 in Belgium and translated of the German by Silvia Toro Trujillo.