Fiber in Animal Nutrition

Fiber in Poultry Nutrition 46 The birds were raised in 6 poultry houses under commercial settings to investigate the effect of the CFC on production and hatching performance. Corn soybean meal diets containing 0.8%wheat bran (control) were formulated to meet the specifications of the breeders. The trial diets containing 0.8% insoluble CFC were reformulated to have the same specifications as the control diets in terms of energy, crude protein, and other essential nutrients. Rations were offered to the 33-week old birds in triplicates (averaging 4330 hens / house) for a period of 6 months according to the breeder’s recommendations. The trial design and the results are summarized in table 21. These trial results confirm the finding of Moradi et al. (2013). Insoluble CFC cause an increased number of eggs. Additionally Faran and Akilian (2014) could see a reduction in mortality as well as a significant (p< 0.05) improvement of the hatchability due to the use of the insoluble CFC. The reduced mor- tality might be related to the above described prebiotic effects of the insoluble fibers. The authors calculated an additional net profit per hen housed of 2.3 US dollars in 6 months based on the current prices and the results observed in their trial. 3.5.2 Performance in broilers There is lots of information available con- cerning the impact of insoluble fiber on the performance of broilers. Liu et al. (2009) from the University of Applied Science in Bingen, Germany conducted a trial using an insoluble CFCbased on lignocellulose in a dose response trial.They observed a significant improvement in FCR and daily weight gain due to the use of the insoluble CFC in a broiler trial with a fattening period of 35 days.The insolubleCFC was used instead of wheat bran in this trial. The analysis of regression showed that the most efficient inclusion rate was at a level of 0.76% insoluble CFC (figure 9) in this feeding trial. Design Control 0.8% wheat bran Trial 0.8 % insoluble CFC* No of female breeders 13,000 13,000 No of replicates 3 3 Female breeders per replicate 4330 4330 No of roosters 1300 1300 Trial start (age of birds) 33 weeks 33 weeks Trial duration 6 months 6 months Results Mortality (%) 11.39 9.44 No of hatching eggs/hen housed 105.6 109.4 Hatchability (%) 67.8 a 72.9 b *Arbocel a,b means differ significant (p<0.05) Table 21: Impact of 0.8 % CFC on performance in broiler breeders (Farran and Akilian, 2014) © ERLING Verlag