Effect of dietary supplementation of β-glucanase on growth performance, carcass quality, blood profiles, noxious gas emission, ileum viscosity, and nutrient digestibility in broilers

Exogenous enzymes have been widely used to wipe out anti-nutritional factors feeds. β-glucanase is a kind of enzyme, which degraded grain β-glucans in barley. It has been proved that supplementation of exogenous enzymes did positive effective in poultry diets. However, there were few studies about the only supplementation of β-glucanase in Wheat-barley-sbybean broiler diet. A total of 600 1-d-old Ross 308 broiler chickens with an average initial body weight of 43 ± 0.42 g were used in a 5 week growth assay to evaluate the effects of dietary supplementation of β-glucanase on growth performance, carcass quality, blood profiles, excreta noxious gas emission, ileum viscosity and nutrient digestibility in broiler. Birds were randomly allotted to 4 dietary treatments containing: 1) CON, Basal diet, 2) T1, CON + 0.01 % DigeGrain Pro B (Advanced Enzyme, India), 3) T2, CON + 0.02 % DigeGrain Pro B, 4) T3, CON + 0.03 % DigeGrain Pro B. All diets were formulated to meet or exceed the NRC (1994) requirements for broiler chickens. There were 10 replicated pens per treatment with 15 broilers chickens per pen. All data were statistically analyzed using the GLM procedure of the SAS program (SAS Inst. Inc., Cary, NC, USA). Orthogonal comparisons were conducted using polynomial regression to measure the linear and quadratic effects of increasing the dietary supplementation of β-glucanase. Birds were weighted and feed intake (FI) were recorded at d 1,18,and 35 as pen basis. BWG and FI were measured and FCR was calculated. From d 18 to 35, BWG increased (P < 0.001) linearly in response to supplementation of β-glucanase (965g, 972g and 986g). During the entire experimental period, BWG (1713g, 1728g, 1739g, and 1750g) increased (P = 0.0188) and FCR (1.41, 1.408, 1.384, and 1.377) decreased (P = 0.0022) linearly in response to supplementation of β-glucanase. The apparent total tract nitrogen digestibility increased (linear effect, P= 0.0025) in response to the supplementation of β-glucanase. However, carcass quality, blood profiles, noxious gas emission and ileum viscosity remained unaffected with the supplementation of β-glucanase into wheat-barley-soybean meal. In conclusion, B-glucanase supplementation had positive effects on growth performance and nutrient digestibility in broiler suggesting that it can be used as a feed additive.