Comparative Effects of Coated Compound and Mono-component Proteases on Growth Performance and Nutritional Efficiency in Broiler Diets

Protease as feed additive is being used in poultry production as a partial replacement for protein sources for cost efficiency and reducing nitrogen excretion. However, diverse proteases may yield different responses under field conditions. A pellet diet study was conducted in Cobb broilers to assess the impact of coated compound (CC) and mono-component (MC) proteases with 5% replacement of digestible amino acids and 0.9% crude protein. Birds fed positive control diet had a better growth than those fed negative control diet, regardless of enzyme supplementation. However, CC protease had shown feed conversion ratio (FCR) like control in a reformulated diet, whereas negative control and MC protease missed to gain the feed conversion. In measures of nutritional efficiency, like energy efficiency, protein efficiency and amino acids efficiency (lysine and methionine), the CC protease proved to be better than MC protease. In terms of European efficiency factor (EEF), control and CC protease elicited a closer response, whereas the other two groups showed a drop. In this study, CC protease allowed partial substitution of digestible amino acids and crude protein, while maintaining feed efficiency and animal performance. It could be concluded that incorporating CC proteases is an efficient choice to maximize the utilization feed material resources and efficiency in animal protein production.