Improvement of the Feedstuffs Nutritional Value by Synergistic Microbial Fermentation Techniques

Synergistic microbial fermentation represents a promising approach to enhancing feedstuff nutritional value, with significant implications for animal health, productivity, and environmental sustainability. The scaling up of production,refining microbial consortia, and integrating fermentation technologies are a considerable part of circular bioeconomy frameworks. This study investigated the aerobic bacterial populations in sheep rumen and dung, revealing counts of 107 CFU/mL and 109 CFU/g, respectively, with dominant genera including Streptococcus, Lactobacillus and Bacillus genera. Standard forage was fermented using synergistic bacterial isolates from rumen (Rumen syn), dung (Dung syn), their combination (Mix RD-syn), and a mixed consortium supplemented with commercial strains of Saccharomyces and Lactobacillus (Mix RDA-syn). All fermentation treatments significantly altered nutritional composition by increasing ash, crude protein, electrolytic balance, and increasing the energy metrics such as digestible energy (DE), metabolizable energy (ME), protein digestible in the intestine based on nitrogen (PDIN), and feed conversion unit (UFV), and decreasing dry matter, moisture, crude fiber, crude fat, carbohydrates, and protein digestible in the intestine by enzymes (PDIE). Rumen syn fermentation increased crude protein by 11.3% and reduced fiber by 9.1%, while Dung syn enhanced protein by 12.9% and energy availability. The mixed consortium (Mix RD-syn) balanced these effects, improving fiber degradation (8.2%) and protein content (12.2%). The supplementation with commercial strains of Saccharomyces and Lactobacillus (Mix RDA-syn) yielded the highest crude protein increase (24.1%) and sugar utilization (46.9% reduction), alongside the increase of DE (8.4%), ME (3%), PDIN (10.7%). These findings indicate that tailored microbial consortia, particularly mixed supplements, can markedly enhance forage nutritional quality for ruminants. Confirmatory in vivo studies are warranted to establish their effectiveness in real-world feeding systems.