Effect of Dietary Fiber on Utilization of Energy and Protein in Chickens.

Abstract

Cellulose powder, pectin, alginic acid and finely ground rice straw were used as the dietary fiber source. Experimental diets were composed of soybean protein, corn starch, cornoil and some minor ingredients with 10% of above mentioned dietary fibers. A total of 8 colostomized White Leghorn male chickens were forced-fed 70 g/day of the experimental diets for 7 days alternatively so as to make a 4×4 Latin-square design. The amount of fresh feces was significantly higher in the pectin and alginic acid diets, however, water content in the feces was also higher in these diets. Consequently, the dry matter excreted were not different between the treatments, which resulted in no difference of dry matter and energy digestibilities among the diets. Protein digestibility was higher in the cellulose diet and lower in the pectin diet due to the significant difference in fecal nitrogen excretion. Urinary nitrogen was very low in the cellulose diet, and reflecting it biological value of protein was higher in the cellulose diet. Acid detergent fiber was digested by chickens to a small extent, but hemicelluloses seemed to be not digested, because the digestibility of neutral detergent fiber was the same to that of acid detergent fiber.