Effect of dietary lignocellulose on metabolizable energy and nutrient digestibility coefficients in poultry diets and on broiler performance under commercial settings

Abstract

In order to examine and evaluate the effect of Arbocel® (lignocellulose) on the quality of litter, performance and carcass yield of broilers at market age, a field experiment was conducted on 9140 straight run day old chicks of the Cobb 500 strain. Under the ruthless winter conditions of 2012, two poultry houses were chosen to perform the experiment. Each poultry house included two sections containing 2285 birds. Starter, grower and finisher diets containing either 0.8percent wheat bran (control) or 0.8percent Arbocel® for the first 10 days, 11 – 32 days and 33 – 41 days, were provided to nourish the birds, respectivey. Arbocel® fed birds were examined for litter moisture at 20 days and at market age.Results showed that the litter of Arbocel® fed birds had a 3.8 and 7.2percent less moisture (P0.05) than those fed 0.8percent wheat bran, at 21 and 40 days of age, respectively. On the other hand, results for final market live weight, feed conversion, yield of ready to cook carcass (RTC) and giblets were equivalent for both groups fed the different treatments, but a minor numerical increase in RTC yield in favor of the Arbocel® treatment was noticed. A second experiment was conducted on thirty six dubbed Hy-Line roosters aged 55 weeks. A precision feeding digestibility trial was performed on the roosters in order to test for the effect of Arbocel® on true protein digestibility, apparent and true metabolizable energy (AME and TME), AME and TME corrected for endogenous nitrogen loss (AMEn and TMEn), and apparent and true digestibility coefficients of amino acids. The roosters were divided into four equal groups. The broiler finisher diets fed included three treatments, control, control with 0.8percent wheat bran, control with 0.8percent Arbocel®. The formulation of the diets in the three treatments included the same level of energy (3200 kcal-kg) and crude protein (20percent). The nine roosters in each of the 3 groups were independently precision force fed with 30g of each diet, while the 9 remaining roos