Evaluation of oats with varying hull inclusion in broiler diets up to 35 days

Scholey, DV ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2450-5989, Marshall, A and Cowan, AA, 2020. Evaluation of oats with varying hull inclusion in broiler diets up to 35 days. Poultry Science, 99 (5), pp. 2566-2572. ISSN 0032-5791

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Abstract

Use of local feed ingredients in poultry feed, such as oats, can be limited by their perceived less than ideal nutritional content. Dehulling oats is expensive and it may be that removing hull is detrimental to the bird in terms of gastrointestinal (GI) development, therefore maintaining some of the high fiber oat hull might reduce costs and improve potential for inclusion in poultry diets.

Male broilers were fed diets with oats replacing 30% of wheat in diets, either dehulled or with graded inclusions of oat hull from day of hatch until day 35. Each diet was fed to 8 pens of 8 birds and performance recorded weekly. Samples were collected at day 21 and 35, for analysis of ileal amino acid digestibility, apparent metabolizable energy (AME) and gross gut development measures.

No detrimental effect was seen on bird weight with hull inclusion, though higher inclusion levels did deleteriously effect feed intake due to increased gut fill from the fiber. AMEn was also adversely effected in the highest hull inclusion diets. However, amino acid digestibility was improved with hull addition, which may be due to an increase in GI tract length, improving nutrient absorption. Gizzard development was also significantly improved and thereby more efficient grinding of diet may also have improved digestibility. At a lower level of hull inclusion (3% total diet) where digestibility is improved without any detrimental effects on gut fill and intake.

Oat hull is well known to improve gut development, especially of the gizzard, with resultant increases in digestibility. This is usually attributed to the mechanical effect of fiber in the gizzard having a grinding effect. However in this study, all fiber was finely ground, so the improvements seen cannot be attributed to a physical cause. Oat including diets with some hull remaining are a cost effective way of utilizing oats as a raw material while maximizing bird performance.

Item Type:	Journal article
Alternative Title:	Oat hull inclusion in broilers
Publication Title:	Poultry Science
Creators:	Scholey, D.V., Marshall, A. and Cowan, A.A.
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Date:	May 2020
Volume:	99
Number:	5
ISSN:	0032-5791
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1016/j.psj.2019.12.043 DOI S0032579120300511 Publisher Item Identifier 1300304 Other
Divisions:	Schools > School of Animal, Rural and Environmental Sciences
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	12 Mar 2020 08:15
Last Modified:	07 Jul 2022 12:56
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/39392

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