A fi ve-week-long experiment was performed on 960 one-day-old Cobb 500 cockerels divided randomly into ten experimental groups of 12 cages (replicates) of 8 birds each. The objective of the experiment was to estimate the effect of non-starch polysaccharides (NSP) derived from various cereals and addition of microbial enzyme preparations on growth performance, ileal viscosity, liver weight and concentration of short-chain fatty acids in broiler chicken caeca. Barley and oats, hulless barley, naked oats, and rye constituted the majority of diets. Diets were non-supplemented or supplemented with a commercial enzyme preparation. Enzyme preparations signifi cantly improved feed conversion ratio and body weight gains (P<0.05) only in groups fed diets based on naked oats and rye. In all groups, enzyme supplementation decreased intestinal viscosity and increased the concentration of acetate and total short-chain fatty acids in caecal digesta with the exception of the group fed the diet with naked oats.
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Józefiak et al. (2004) studied this question.
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