Live performance, carcass yield, protein and energy retention of broiler chickens fed canola and flax full-fat seeds and the restored mixtures of meal and oil

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted to assess the use, in broiler diets, of full-fat canola and flax seed or their restored mixtures of seed meals and oils. The first experiment compared raw and heated full-fat canola and flax seeds, and mixtures of the meals with the corresponding oils or animal tallow (ratios of 6:4, respectively), each added at 10% to the diet. The second experiment evaluated the raw full-fat seeds or mixtures of the meals with canola oil or animal tallow, added at 10 and 20% to the diets. Each experiment lasted 6 wk. Heat treatment did not significantly affect performance (P > 0.05). Dry matter and protein retention, and bird mortality were not influenced by dietary treatments. Diets containing 10 or 20% full-fat canola or canola meal plus oil mixtures resulted in similar body weight, feed conversion and carcass yield as the soybean meal control diet. In the first experiment, the inclusion of full-fat flaxseed depressed body weight, feed conversion and dietary metabolizable energy (ME) while the flax meal plus flax oil containing diets gave responses similar to the canola meal diets. In exp. 2, increasing the level of flax seed or flax meal plus oil mixture to 20% further depressed body weight and feed conversion. The ME and feed conversion efficiency of birds fed the full-fat seed containing diets were less than those obtained from birds fed the meal plus oil diets, but only significantly so for the flax diets. The type of fat fed with the meal had no effects on the responses of the birds. Key words: Chickens, canola, flax, heating, carcass yield, protein retention, metabolizable energy