Response of Broiler Chickens on Diets Based on High-Moisture Maize Grain Subjected to Artificial Drying and Supplementation with Microbial Enzyme

Abstract

The effect of feeding high-moisture maize gains dried in the sun or artificially in a forced draught oven at 80, 90 or 100 °C for 24 hours and supplemented with microbial enzymes (Avizyme 1502 and Phyzyme XP) or growth performance was investigated in a broiler growth trial. Feed intake up to 21 days was decreased as a result of oven-drying of grains whereas supplementation with microbial enzymes increased feed intake (FI) compared to non-enzyme diets (881.1 vs 817.2 g/bird). There was no effect of grain drying temperature and the enzyme supplement on FI when assessed at 7d of age. Up to d7, there was a reduction in live weight (LW) with increase in grain drying temperature while supplementation with enzymes significantly improved LW only on the diets containing sun-dried grains (731 g/bird) and grains at 90 °C (634 g/bird). The LW was significantly higher in chickens on the enzyme supplemented diets than on diets without enzyme (638 vs 547 g/bird). The FCR at this age was reduced with increase in grain drying temperature while the FCR improved on diets supplemented with enzymes. Feed conversion ratio was also better with the enzymes than without (1.48 vs 1.62 g/g). From results of the current study, diets based on sun-dried maize or maize dried at 90 °C provided comparatively better gross response. It may be inferred that there was a positive response to addition of microbial enzymes. Overall, it may be assumed that, for broiler chickens, there is little or no difference between the nutritive value of sun-dried grain and grain artificially dried at 90 °C.