The effects of extrusion and pelleting of feed for trout on the digestibility of protein, amino acids and energy and on feed conversion

Abstract

One feeding and two digestion experiments were performed in order to study the effect of feed processing by extrusion and pelleting on feed conversion and on the digestibility of energy, protein and amino acids. Feed conversion was 1·24 when trout was reared on an extruded diet as compared with 1·61 when reared on the same but pelleted diet. The specific growth rates of 1·56 and 1·55%, respectively, attained with both diets, were almost identical due to a depression of voluntary intake of the extruded diet. The effect of different daily feed intakes in percentage of body weight (NI, %) on the digestibility of energy ( D, %) could be described using the following linear regression equations: D(%) = 78·3 − 5·9 NI(%) for the pelleted diet and D(%) = 87·5 − 3·9 NI(%) for the extruded diet. Though conversion of the extruded and pelleted diets differed significantly the digestible energy needed to produce 1 kg of gain was nearly the same, 17 370 kJ and 17 580 kJ respectively, indicating that differences in conversion were due to the digestible energy content. The digestion coefficients of the protein and amino acids were not influenced significantly ( p < 0·05) by a change in the feed process, but different digestion coefficients for individual amino acids were observed. The use of digestible carbohydrate for trout nutrition is limited by the incidence of liver degeneration.