INFLUENCE OF DIETARY BETAINE ON NUTRIENT UTILIZATION AND DIGESTIVE ENZYME ACTIVITY IN YELLOW-FEATHER BROILERS DURING STARTER PHASE
W.C. Liu, B.H. Ou, Y.L. Yuan, C.Y. Sun, M. Xiao, Z.H. Zhao* and L.L. An*
Department of Animal Science, College of Agriculture, Guangdong Ocean University, Zhanjiang, Guangdong 524088, P. R. China
*Corresponding author’s email: zhzhao@gdou.edu.cn; anlilong_gdou@163.com.
Abstract
The present experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of dietary supplementation with different levels of betaine on nutrient utilization and digestive enzyme activity in indigenous yellow-feather broilers during starter phase. A total of 288 male, one-d-old Huaixiang chickens with an average initial body weight (BW) of 44.52 ± 1.07 g were randomly allotted to 4 treatments. Each dietary treatment consisted of 6 replicates, with 12 birds per replicate. The 4 dietary treatments were corn-soybean meal-based diets and supplemented with 0, 500, 1000 and 2000 mg/kg betaine, respectively. The trial period lasted 28 d. It was found that dietary betaine supplementation improved the calcium (Ca) utilization (cubic, P=0.0187). Meanwhile, dietary supplementation with different levels of betaine increased the trypsin activity (quadratic, P=0.0445) and lipase activity (cubic, P=0.0344) of the jejunum. Taken together, this study revealed that betaine could promote the digestive function in indigenous yellow-feather broilers during starter phase.
Keywords: betaine; digestive function; indigenous yellow-feather broilers; starter phase.
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