Comparison of nutrient digestibility and energy utilization of wheat, barley and hull-less barley in broiler chicken feeding

J. Barteczko, O. Lasek, R. Augustyn, V. Vlizlo

Wheat and barley are just inexpensive source of energy for poultry, however use of barley should be limited because of high content of non-starch polysaccharides (NSP) and ?? glucans (Saki, 2005). In poultry nutrition it is necessary to take into consideration crude protein and energy contents but especially crude fibre content when replacing in diet of wheat by mixtures with barley (Hetland and Svihus, 2001). Furthermore nutrient utilization depended on dietary and detergent fibre and also the amount and type of antinutritional factors contained in cell wall of cereals (Virkki et al., 2005). Non-starch polysaccharides are responsible for increasing intestinal content viscosity, inhibition of enzymes diffusion and nutrient absorption decreasing (Yin i in. 2001). Negative correlation between energy value of mixtures with high content of fibre and obtained performance was found (Hetland et al., 2002). Therefore, it is important to detremine metabolizable energy and nutrient digestibility of feedstuffs (Hetland et al., 2003). Increasing the crude fibre content in diet to about 1% above recommended level caused decrease of energy utilization coefficient by about 4% (Barteczko, 1988).

The aim of the study was to comparison the nutrient digestibility and energy utilization of wheat, barley and hull-less barley in broiler chickens.

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