The effect of soybean meal replacement with raw full-fat soybean in diets for broiler chickens

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of soybean meal replacement by multiple levels of raw full-fat soybean (REFS) in broiler diets on the growth performance, apparent ileal amino acids digestibility (AIAAD), intestinal histometric characteristic, pancreas weight and trypsin activity in digesta. In the experiment, in total 208 × ROSS 308 male chickens were used to examine the effect of RFFS on growth performance, AIAAD, intestinal morphology and trypsin activity in the intestinal content. Four dietary treatments were used: control group (without RFFS) and groups containing 4%, 8% and 12% of RFFS. The experiment lasted from 10th to 38th day of age. The presence of RFFS in broiler diets markedly decreased body weight and feed conversion ratio merely in group fed by 12% of RFFS in its diet. The AIAAD was lower when diets contained RFFS in all observed amino acids expect methionine. Higher AIAAD was obtained in RFFS12 in comparison with RFFS8 and RFFS4 due to a higher weight of pancreas and higher trypsin activity. Pancreas weight and trypsin activity increased with increasing RFFS in the diets. The morphology parameters villus height and crypt depth were negatively affected by the presence of RFFS.