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Brief Report

Live performance, digestive tract features, and ileal nutrient digestibility in broilers fed diets containing soy hulls

, & ORCID Icon
Pages 1577-1582 | Received 24 Sep 2020, Accepted 25 Nov 2020, Published online: 26 Dec 2020
 

Abstract

This study aimed at determining the impact of dietary soy hulls (SH) addition on growth performance, digestive tract attributes, and apparent ileal digestibility of dry matter (DM), nitrogen, and phosphorus (P) in broiler chickens. Male broilers (Ross 308, n = 224) were assigned to one of four diets, including 0, 20, 40, or 60 g/kg SH, with eight replications per treatment from 0 to 21 d of age in a completely randomised design. Dietary chromic oxide was the indigestible marker for determining the apparent ileal digestibility. Data were subjected to orthogonal polynomial contrasts using the Proc GLM of SAS. Growth performance and small intestine weight and length, and gizzard content pH were not influenced (p > .05) by increasing levels of dietary SH. Increasing the dietary SH level resulted in a linear increase (p < .01) in absolute empty gizzard weight. Relative gizzard weight was greater (p < .05) in birds fed on 60 g/kg SH diet compared to birds fed on 40 g/kg SH diet. Apparent ileal digestibility of nitrogen was not affected (p > .05) by dietary SH inclusion. However, apparent ileal digestibility of DM and P increased linearly (p < .01) with increasing dietary SH levels. In conclusion, the addition of SH up to 60 g/kg improved the ileal digestibility of DM and P and increased gizzard weight without affecting the proportionate small intestine morphology and live performance of broiler chickens at 21 d of age.

    HIGHLIGHTS

  • Soy hulls did not have any effect on growth

  • Soy hulls increased the digestibility of P

  • Soy hulls increased gizzard weight

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

The experimental protocol was approved by the Adnan Menderes University Local Animal Ethical Committee.

Additional information

Funding

The current experiment was funded by the Scientific Research Projects Coordination Unit of Istanbul University − Cerrahpasa. Project number: TDK-2019-32842. The authors gratefully acknowledge the Istanbul University − Cerrahpasa for granting the fund.