Effect of feeding fermented rapeseed meal with or without enzymes on gut health 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 gut health 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) [3] 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 gut morphology (villus height, crypt depth of different segments of the intestine), whereas microbial load showed significant reduction in E. coli counts and increased Lactobacillus counts compared to control group. It was concluded that dietary inclusion of FRSM up to 7.5%, with or without enzyme supplementation, has no detrimental impact on gut morphology and positively modulates the gut microbial population in broilers.