The use of a Beta-mananase in maize-soybean meal diets for broilers

One thousand fifty broilers of a Cuban commercial hybrid of both sexes were selected according to a completely randomized design with 7 replications o f 30 chickens per treatment, to assess the inclusion of an enzyme, the beta mananase, in maize-soybean meal diets. Two parallel studies were carried o ut: one with imported soybean cake meal (IS) and another with soybean meal manually toasted and overheated (SOH). In the first study treatments consis ted of a control without the enzyme and two experimental diets with 6.9 MJ metabolizable energy/kg of feed less than the control and one of them with enzyme addition. In the second 50% of the IS was substituted by SOH with or without the enzyme. Some factors affecting the productive results could no t be attributed to the experimental treatments, however, in the first exper iment. liveweight slightly improved by 0.03 kg/bird, while the feed:gain ra tio decreased by 0.08 units when SOH was used. These results indicate the n eed of further studies on the use of enzymes in non-conventional diets incl uding soybean or other grain legumes and cereals characterized by their non -starch polysaccharides (NSP) or are submitted to deficient technological p rocessing with impairement in their nutritive value, to increase digestibil ity and, thus, the nutrient utilization efficiency.