Dietary live yeast supplementation alleviates transport‐stress‐impaired meat quality of broilers through maintaining muscle energy metabolism and antioxidant status

BACKGROUND This experiment was to investigate the effect of dietary live yeast (LY, 1 × 10 10  CFU g −1 ) supplementation on serum metabolic parameters, meat quality as well as antioxidant enzyme activity of transported broilers. A total of 192 one‐day‐old broilers were randomly assigned to four treatments with six replicates and eight chicks per replicate: a basal diet without transportation (CON), a basal diet containing 0 (T), 500 (T + LY 500 ) and 1000 mg kg −1 (T + LY 1000 ) LY with 3 h of transportation after feeding for 42 days, respectively. The serum and muscle samples of broilers were collected immediately after 3 h of transportation. RESULTS A higher ( P  < 0.05) final body weight and average daily weight gain were observed in T + LY 1000 group compared with CON and T groups. The T + LY 1000 group reduced ( P  < 0.05) the serum lactate contents and improved ( P  < 0.05) the pH 24h and decreased ( P  < 0.05) the drip loss in muscles of transported‐broilers. Also, the T + LY 1000 group enhanced ( P  < 0.05) the total‐antioxidant capacity and reduced ( P  < 0.05) the malondialdehyde in serum and muscles. Besides, the messenger RNA (mRNA) expression of avian uncoupling protein (avUCP) in muscles was down‐regulated ( P  < 0.05) of T + LY 1000 group compared with T group. CONCLUSION Dietary LY supplementation alleviates transport‐stress‐impaired meat quality of broilers through maintaining muscle energy metabolism and antioxidant status. Therefore, LY may serve as a potential protector for broilers under transport stress in the future. © 2022 The Authors. Journal of The Science of Food and Agriculture published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.