INTESTINAL VISCOSITY AT BROILER CHICKENS FED WITH COMBINED FORAGES WITH DIFFERENT PROPORTIONS OF BARLEY

Abstract

Non-starch polysaccharides (NSP) are composed from chemical compounds with
different physical and chemical proprieties (cellulose, arabinoxylans, beta glucans
and pectic polysaccharides with manans and gallactans). The antinutritional
effects on monogastrics are different and in many cases extreme. Some cereals like
barley, oat, wheat, contain significant quantities of NSP. The main negative effects
of NSP are related to their viscous nature, to their physiological and
morphological influence on the digestive tract and their interaction with the
intestinal microflora. The purpose of this experiment is to establish the correlation
coefficients between the values of intestinal viscosity and the levels of NSPt, NSPi
and NSPs obtained by the inclusion of different percentage of barley in the
structure of combined forages. The experiment was carried out on a period of 6
weeks on 120 broiler chickens divided in four experimental groups (CL, EL1, EL2
and EL3). The broiler chickens were fed with combined forages with the same
nutritive characteristics but with different percentage of barley (0-40%). It has
been showed that at the age of 3 and 6 weeks the intestinal viscosity rise with up to
64.67% along with the proportion of barley from the combined forages. Between
the content of forages in NSP and intestinal viscosity exist a positive correlation,
the highest correlation coefficient was registered in the case of NSPs, 0.92 at 3
weeks and respectively 0.99 at 6 weeks.