The Use of High-oil Corn in Young Broiler Chicken Diets

The objective of this study was to measure performance of young broiler chickens fed three varieties of high-oil corn (HOC 1, 2, and 3) compared with eight varieties of normal corn (NC). HOC varieties contained about 80% more oil than NC (average crude fat; 6.71% vs 3.72%) and about 29% more protein (average CP; 9.54% vs 7.38%). Each experimental diet was formulated with the same amount (55.205%) of each corn hybrid. Experiment 1 had by six dietary treatments (HOC1 and five NC varieties, 360 chickens) and Experiment 2 had five treatments (HOC2, HOC3, and three NC varieties, 250 chickens). In Exp. 1, for feed efficiency (F/G), the treatment contained HOC1 had better performance (p<0.05) than other NC varieties except NC5. As expected, there was no significant difference in average daily feed intake (p>0.05) among dietary treatments. The dietary treatment of HOC1 gave an improvement of 4.3% in F/G that came from 6% higher gross energy (GE) value of HOC1. Compared with Exp. 2, the dietary treatments contained HOC hybrids gave 4.4% higher F/G than NC dietary treatments, which came from a 5% increase in GE value. HOC varieties had superior nutrients content to NC for poultry, due to the fact that HOC contained higher concentrations of energy, protein, lysine, and methionine, thus improving growth and F/G.