Nutritional value of diets for broiler chickens as affected by fat source, amylose level and diet processing
Two experiments were conducted to investigate effects of fat source, fat level, amylose level and processing technique on technical pellet quality and broiler performance. In both experiments wheat-barley-based diets were either pelleted or expanded and pelleted using the same production conditions. In exp. 1 soy oil and akofeed fat at inclusion levels of 25 and 50 g kg-1, respectively, were tested. Akofeed fat containing diets resulted in significant (P < 0.001) improvement in pellet durability compared with soy oil containing diets under both processing methods and both fat levels. As a consequence of higher content of amylose-lipid complexes, feeding the akofeed fat containing diets resulted in significant reduction (P < 0.05) of starch digestibility at jejunual level. In exp. 2, three barley cultivars with varying amylose content were tested. Total tract starch digestibility was higher (P < 0.0001) for normal amylose (NA) containing diets compared with low amylose (LA) and high amylose (HA) containing diets. In vitro results, however, showed highest starch degradation for LA diets compared with NA and HA diets, indicating that the in vitro method did not seem to be a good predictor of starch digestibility for broiler chickens. Key words: Starch; Barley; Amylose-lipid complex; Akofeed fat; Soy oil; Expander-pelleting treatment