A conversation with Yann Fournis and Luisa Aneiros Gené about looking beyond traditional performance measures, understanding what’s happening inside the bird, and turning microbiome complexity into practical insight.
Body weight, feed conversion ratio, mortality and egg production tell poultry producers a lot about flock performance. But they don’t always tell us why we’re seeing those results.
That’s where microbiome science can add another layer of understanding, and where the Galleon™ platform can help make that understanding practical.
Galleon™ turns the complex, constantly changing world of the gut microbiome into actionable intelligence. Powered by advanced microbiome analysis, artificial intelligence (AI) and the world’s largest microbiome database, it helps uncover the insights that matter most, giving nutritionists and producers a deeper way to investigate results and make more informed nutrition and farm management decisions.
We spoke with Yann Fournis and Luisa Gené about what they’re learning from the poultry microbiome, how Galleon™ helps integrate those insights into practical decisions that can support future success in the flock, and why some familiar ideas about gut health might be worth another look.
MHS Poultry Category Manager
Advisor, Global Technology - Poultry
Q : What can the microbiome tell us that traditional poultry measures can’t?
Luisa: In poultry production, we’re very focused on key performance indicators (KPIs) like body weight, feed conversion ratio (FCR), mortality, and egg production. But these KPIs tell us what has already happened.
The microbiome can help us understand why it happened. Why did FCR change? Why are we seeing a change in mortality or production?
You can have the same feed, housing type and management practices in two flocks, and they can still perform differently. Looking at the microbiome gives us another way to understand why, and even more importantly, to identify risks and opportunities earlier.
Yann: I completely agree. For years, body weight and FCR were the two main KPIs we followed, along with laying rate in layers.
Those measures are still key. But microbiome science brings new parameters into the discussion. We can look beyond the final performance number and understand more about the biology behind it.
That’s what’s exciting.
Q : What surprises people when they start looking at the microbiome?
Yann: People are often surprised that, although the gut microbiota is a complex environment, we can influence it.
Different interventions can also have different effects. For example, in our work with the Portafolio Biostrong™, we’ve seen that postbiotics can promote beneficial bacteria and accelerate gut microbiota maturation, while phytogenics may have more impact on controlling undesirable bacteria.
So it’s not simply about changing the microbiota. It’s also about understanding the type of change we’re trying to achieve.
Luisa: And that’s where measurement becomes important. If we can see what’s happening in the microbiome we can identify where there may be a gap or an opportunity to improve. This is something we couldn’t really see before.
Q : Microbiome data can be incredibly complex. how does Galleon™ make it useful?
Luisa: Traditionally, microbiome methodologies have been complex to understand. With Galleon™, we use AI and a large database to help focus on the information that matters.
That means we can simplify the results for customers and provide actionable insights. We’ve taken something that was previously much more focused on research and brought it into practical application in the field.
Yann: And that’s an important change. In the past, microbiota science was extremely descriptive. Now we can connect what we’re seeing in the microbiota with final performance and use that understanding when thinking about nutritional interventions.
Q : How can we connect that microbiome insight with the right nutrition solution?
Yann: We can first create a profile of the gut microbiota to understand its current status. Then we design an intervention—for example, applying a Biostrong™ nutrition solution—and measure again to understand the shift in the microbiota.
One example comes from one of our recent projects we are developing. We found that lower body weight or higher feed conversion ratio can be linked with delayed maturation of the gut microbiota. We also found that Biostrong™ Dual can support healthy microbiome maturation.
So we’re not only looking at whether performance changed. Galleon™ gives us another way to investigate why we’re seeing that response and better understand the mode of action of the solution.
Luisa: And that helps us become more precise in our recommendations. Our solutions can be very good, but that doesn’t mean every solution is right for every situation.
If we can measure and understand what’s happening, we can be more precise about the intervention we recommend.
Q : What’s one thing you wish more poultry nutritionists understood about the microbiome?
Yann: That there aren’t really “good bugs” and “bad bugs.” There’s a good microbiota at a certain age.
Take Lactobacillus. We often call it a good bacterium. But Lactobacillus can be appropriate for a young animal. An older animal with a digestive tract dominated by Lactobacillus is a different situation.
The gut microbiota is extremely dynamic throughout the animal’s life cycle. The idea of “good bugs” and “bad bugs” is still stuck in the industry, while this notion of microbiota evolution and maturation isn’t yet fully understood.
Luisa: I would add something to that: nutritionists aren’t only formulating for the bird. They’re also formulating for the microbiome.
In very simple words, we’re feeding the bugs inside the bird.
The more we understand about what’s happening in the microbiome, the more precisely we can think about nutritional interventions.
YANN: I really like Luisa’s phrase, “we feed the bugs,” because we really do.
Nutritionists are already familiar with the idea that feed is utilized by microbes in ruminants. Thinking about it this way is relatively new in poultry, but we’re also feeding the bugs in poultry.
For Yann and Luisa, microbiome science brings the next level of understanding to traditional poultry KPIs.
Where performance measures tell us what happened. The microbiome can help us investigate why, and reveal patterns or opportunities that might otherwise remain hidden.
And perhaps that’s the real shift from gut feelings to gut science: making the poultry microbiome more measurable, understandable and, ultimately, useful.