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The chicken gastrointestinal (GI) tract is home to a complex microbial community that underlines the links between diet and health. The GI tract is rich in microbial biodiversity, playing home to ≥500 phylotypes or ∼1 million bacterial genes, which equates to 40–50 times the number in the chicken genome. Manipulating the microbiota would serve as promising therapeutic paradigm; albeit not a new concept for the poultry industry as evidenced by competitive exclusion where newly hatched chickens could be protected against colonization by Salmonella enteritidis by dosing a suspension of gut contents derived from healthy adult chickens. This concept of adding beneficial bacteria to the intestine has led to the development of probiotics and prebiotics. Unlike the host genome, which is rarely manipulated by xenobiotic intervention, the microbiome is readily changeable by diet, ingestion of antibiotics, infection by …