Nutritional Emulsifiers and Their Effect on Broiler Performance, a Benchmark Study

Usage of nutritional emulsifiers in animal feed offers a valid strategy to improve energy, fat and protein digestibility. There are numerous nutritional emulsifiers currently on the market containing a range of active ingredients. Most emulsifiers contain phospholipids or lysophospholipids (LPL), present in lecithin or lysolecithin. An alternative active ingredient is glyceryl polyethylene glycol ricinolate (GPGR). It is important to know the hydrophiliclipophilic balance (HLB) value of these active ingredients, as this provides crucial information on the activity of the nutritional emulsifier in a specific environment. A nutritional emulsifier with a high HLB value will be more potent to making fat in water emulsions (e.g. fat emulsification in the gastro-intestinal tract), and this will be reflected in the performance of the animal. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of three different nutritional emulsifiers on performance in broilers.

This trial was conducted at the Flemish research institute ILVO in Belgium. A total of 1080 one-day old male Ross 308 chicks were divided into four treatments, with 9 replicates of 30 birds per pen per treatment. The treatments were T1-control, T2-GPGRA (Excential Energy Plus, supplied by ORFFA Additives BV; 350 ppm supplemented ‘on-top’), T3-LPL (500 ppm supplemented ‘on-top’) and T4-GPGRB (500 ppm supplemented ‘on-top’). All tested nutritional emulsifiers had a different HLB value, with the LPL nutritional emulsifier having the lowest. Diets were fed in pelleted form and were wheat-based. A challenge was provided to all the groups, including the control, by adding rye, rapeseed meal and an increased crude protein level without NSP enzyme. Feed intake (FI), weight gain (WG) and feed conversion ratio (FCR) in accordance with the different phases (0-9, 9-23 and 23 to 35 days) were recorded. The FCR data were corrected for mortality using the number of ‘broiler days’ (number of broilers x days alive). All zootechnical parameters were analyzed by a General Linear Model (GLM) with treatment as a fixed factor and block as a random factor. A Tukey HSD test was used to compare the treatments if the GLM determined a significant (P < 0.05) treatment effect or a trend (0.05 < P < 0.1).

Considering the entire evaluated period (0-35 days), the results (see table 1) showed a numerically higher weight/bird in birds fed GPGRA and LPL compared to those fed the control diet. Birds fed GPGRB showed significantly lower weight/bird when compared to those fed all other treatments. Lowest feed conversion ratio (FCR) was seen in birds fed GPGRA whilst the highest feed conversion ratio was seen in birds fed LPL.

In conclusion, supplementing broiler diet with the GPGRA nutritional emulsifier resulted in the best bird performance overall. The low performance in birds fed GPGRB could not be attributed to chicks, pellets or pellet quality as these parameters were similar among the treatments.

Table 1 - Broiler performance when fed different nutritional emulsifiers. Standard deviation (SD) between brackets.