Brian Kerr

Supplemental xylanase may be used in diet formulation to reduce diet cost, mitigate the antinutritive effects of arabinoxylans, increase energy utilization, and improve growth performance of broilers. Xylanase has been shown to partially depolymerize arabinoxylans, which can reduce intestinal viscosity, reduce nutrient encapsulation, and modulate the intestinal microflora of broilers (Choct et al. ...

BackgroundMaize oil is an abundant source of vegetable oil used in human foods and animal feeds. Maize oil provides 8579 kcal/ kg of ME [1], which is comparable to soybean oil (8574 kcal/kg), and greater than canola oil (8384 kcal/kg) and palm kernel oil (7119 kcal/kg) when added to swine diets. The addition of lipids to animal feeds not only increases energy density, but also enhances the absorpt ...

BackgroundIndigestible markers are commonly used in animal nutrition studies to calculate digestibility coefficients, with chromic oxide, titanium dioxide, and acid insoluble ash being the most common in swine research [1]. Physiological aspects associated with gastric emptying or rate of passage are complex and affected by a variety of factors [2, 3]. Rate of passage can be affected by BW [4], fe ...

IntroductionEnergy is the most expensive component in swine diets, and record high feed costs in recent years have caused nutritionists to focus on optimizing caloric efficiency of feed ingredients used in commercial feeds. As a result, nutritionists need comprehensive, accurate, meaningful, and standardized analytical methods to quantify lipid peroxidation in feed ingredients before they will be ...

IntroductionPlant carbohydrates can be classified into three categories: 1) simple sugars and their conjugates (glucose, fructose, etc.); 2) storage reserve compounds (starch); and 3) structural carbohydrates (cellulose, hemicellulose, etc.). Simple sugars and storage compounds are primarily digested in the upper gastrointestinal tract of pigs, although not completely, while structural carbohydrat ...

World production of lipid sourcesGlobal production of vegetable oils has increased dramatically over the last 20 years with approximately 168 million metric tonnes produced in 2014. The primary vegetable oils produced in the world include palm oil (35 % of the total production), soybean oil (26 %), rapeseed/ canola oil (15 %), and sunflower oil (9 %). Other vegetable oils account for only about 15 ...