INTESTINAL VISCOSITY AT BROILER CHICKENS FED WITH COMBINED FORAGES WITH DIFFERENT PROPORTIONS OF BARLEY

Non-starch polysaccharides (NSP) are composed from chemical compounds with different physical and chemical proprieties (cellulose, arabinoxylans, beta glucans and pectic polysaccharides with manans and gallactans). The antinutritional effects on monogastrics are different and in many cases extreme. Some cereals like barley, oat, wheat, contain significant quantities of NSP. The main negative effects of NSP are related to their viscous nature, to their physiological and morphological influence on the digestive tract and their interaction with the intestinal microflora. The purpose of this experiment is to establish the correlation coefficients between the values of intestinal viscosity and the levels of NSPt, NSPi and NSPs obtained by the inclusion of different percentage of barley in the structure of combined forages. The experiment was carried out on a period of 6 weeks on 120 broiler chickens divided in four experimental groups (CL, EL1, EL2 and EL3). The broiler chickens were fed with combined forages with the same nutritive characteristics but with different percentage of barley (0-40%). It has been showed that at the age of 3 and 6 weeks the intestinal viscosity rise with up to 64.67% along with the proportion of barley from the combined forages. Between the content of forages in NSP and intestinal viscosity exist a positive correlation, the highest correlation coefficient was registered in the case of NSPs, 0.92 at 3 weeks and respectively 0.99 at 6 weeks.