‘Viscous’ Cereals-Based Diets for Poultry: The Need for Enzyme Supplementation

Abstract

Viscous cereals-based diets, particularly those of barley and rye, lead to poor animal performance and feed efficiency in non-ruminants, particularly poultry, as they lack the natural enzymes that degrade some of the major dietary components of these cereals. Thus, the components confer attributes of anti-nutritional factors in these viscous cereals. They are mainly β-glucans in barley and arabinoxlans in rye, respectively. The suppression or removal of the negative impacts of these anti-nutritional components of these cereals would undoubtedly have positive effects in animal diets involving barley and rye and thus aid in improving performance and feed efficiency. Therefore, the identifications of these factors and matching them with appropriate exogenous enzymes for their degradation is to the rescue.  From this standpoint therefore, the enrichment of barley-based diets with β-glucanase and a mixture of arabinoxylanase and β-glucanase in rye-based diets significantly improved poultry performance and feed efficiency and thereby lead to improved production indices.