Abstract
Growth and physiological characteristics of meat-type chicken such as serum immunoglobulin concentration, digesta pH and viscosity, pancreatic enzyme activity, organelle weights, and gene expression of intestinal GLUT2 of chickens was studied by means of 375 day-old chicks which randomly assigned to three treatments with five replicates in a completely randomized design. Two different types of cereal-based diets (wheat, and barley) were used as experimental groups and a corn-based diet was also considered to serve as control group. All diets had similar contents of crude protein, energy, and total non-starch polysaccharides (NSP). Results indicated that different dietary source of NSP had significantly (P<0.01) affected growth traits, so barley and wheat diets had maximum feed intake and feed conversion rate, inversely minimum weight gain than corn diet. Intestinal physicochemical characteristics such as pH and viscosity of digesta significantly (P<0.01) changed by different dietary source of NSP. Wheat and barley diets had minimum pH, and inversely maximum viscosity compared to corn diet. The maximum values of fat pad and liver percentage, in contrary, minimum values of pancreas and gut length belonged to corn diet (P<0.01). Serum immunoglobulin concentrations of IgG and IgM for wheat and barley diets were higher than their counterparts fed on corn (P<0.01). Gene expression of intestinal GLUT2 of chickens based on mean fold change after feeding of wheat or barley was at upper level compared to corn diet (P<0.01). In conclusion, based on findings of present study, feeding of different dietary NSP sources to broiler chickens significantly affected growth traits and internal organelle percentages, as well as physiological and immune responses. Also gene expression of intestinal GLUT2 well affected by cereal NSP sources through feeding of wheat or barley.
Highlights
The main ingredient of poultry feedstuff is corn grain, but alternatively other cereal grains can be successfully used instead of corn in poultry diets
Birds fed on barley and wheat diets had significantly lower body weight and higher feed conversion ratio (FCR) than their counterparts fed on corn diet (P
We can conclude that chemical composition of wheat grain is completely different from corn and barley grains and this means that wheat and after that barley can alter physiological characteristics of chickens, in this case especially affected the immune competence and production of serum immunoglobulin
Summary
The main ingredient of poultry feedstuff is corn grain, but alternatively other cereal grains can be successfully used instead of corn in poultry diets. Wheat and barley are generally used as embedment of corn to supply energy in poultry diets. Though the primary components of these grains are starch and proteins, but considerable content of non-starch polysaccharides (NSPs) derived from the cell walls of these cereals [26, 30]. The primitive antinutritional factor in the cereal grains is generally considered as NSPs [17]. Different grains have disparate content of NSP polymers which significantly vary between cereals and affect their alimentary value and anti-nutritional impacts [30]. A literature review of corresponsive reports indicates that NSPs from different sources of cereal grains have various adverse effects on health and physiological characteristics of poultry [6, 19, 21]. Level of SciPress applies the CC-BY 4.0 license to works we publish: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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