Nutritional value of wheat screenings for broiler chickens

Abstract

Two trials were conducted to study the nutritional value of two wheat screening samples in broiler diets. Experiment 1 evaluated the chemical composition, and energy and amino acid digestibility while, exp. 2 evaluated the performance of 1980 female broiler chickens, housed in straw litter pens, and fed four different levels of the two wheat screening samples. In exp. 2, the wheat screening samples replaced 0%, 25%, 50% and 100% for sample 1 and 0, 25, and 50% for sample 2 of the wheat in diets fed to broilers. Each treatment was replicated six times with 55 birds per replication. The metabolizable energy, and protein content, and mean ileal amino acid digestibility were 3107 kcal kg-1, 15.77%, 83.3%, and 3023 kcal kg-1, 15.19%, 80.4% for wheat screening samples 1 and 2, respectively. The samples contained 90.5 and 88.2% wheat and the major weed seed in both samples was wild buckwheat, which was 4.5 and 6.3% in samples 1 and 2, respectively. In the broiler feeding trial, no significant differences were found between the wheat diet and those containing wheat screenings with regards to growth, feed efficiency, and mortality. There were variations in the composition of wheat screening samples; however, in this study, these variations did not significantly affect the performance of broiler chickens. Wheat screenings totally replaced wheat in balanced broiler diets without negatively affecting performance.