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Energy and amino acid availability to chickens of waxy wheat

A comparison of the performance of broiler chickens fed diets containing either waxy or non-waxy wheat.

Year of Publication2002

The objectives of the current study were to assess the nutrient composition of a waxy wheat sample and the resulting productive performance of broiler chickens when fed this sample as part of nutritionally complete diets.A second non-waxy UK wheat sample was evaluated in the same experiment to give comparative data. True metabolisable energy (TME) and amino acid digestibility were measured using a rapid determination technique with adult cockerels. Starch digestibility was measured in both mature cockerels and young birds. Growth performance of the diets was compared using young growing broiler chickens. The waxy wheat sample had a similar content to the non-waxy wheat sample. However, the composition of the starch differed; with the waxy wheat sample containing almost no amylose compared to 156 g kg-1 in the non-waxy sample. There were no differences (p > 0.05) between the TMEn of the wheat samples. There were no (p > 0.05) significant differences in the digestibility of any amino acids. Starch was completely digested by the cockerels and by the young chickens fed both the waxy and non-waxy wheat samples. The broiler chickens fed the diet containing the waxy wheat sample had a lower feed conversion ratio (p < 0.05) than the birds fed the non-waxy sample.

Citation

Pirozliev, V R; Rose, S P and Graybosch, R A (2002) "Energy and amino acid availability to chickens of waxy wheat"Archiv fur Geflugelkunde 66 (3) pp 108-113

This item is categorised as follows

• Subject Collection > Livestock & dairy > Poultry & egg production
• Subject Collection > Livestock & dairy > Forage crops & other feed

Additional keywords/tags

animal nutrition