Effect of feeding fermented rapeseed meal with or without enzymes on growth performance in broilers

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of dietary inclusion of fermented rapeseed meal (FRSM) with or without enzyme supplementation on the growth performance of broilers. A total of 240 day-old Cobb broiler chicks were randomly assigned to eight dietary treatments with three replicates of ten birds each for six weeks period. All diets were formulated to be iso-caloric and iso-nitrogenous, as per BIS (2007) standards. The control group (T1) received a corn-soybean meal based basal diet without FRSM or enzymes, while T2 was fed the basal diet with 0.02% enzyme supplementation. The treatment groups T3, T5 and T7 were supplemented with FRSM at 2.5, 5.0 and 7.5%, respectively, without enzymes, whereas T4, T6 and T8 received 2.5, 5.0 and 7.5% of FRSM with 0.02% enzymes, respectively. The results revealed no significant differences (p>0.05) among treatment groups with respect to body weight, feed intake, feed conversion ratio and survivability. It was concluded that dietary inclusion of FRSM up to 7.5%, with or without enzyme supplementation, had no detrimental effect on growth performance in broilers, indicating its safe incorporation in poultry diets.