Effect of soaking, fermentation with lactobacillus and enzyme treatment on nitrogen‐corrected apparent metabolizable energy values of wheat in cockerels and quails

Summary An experiment was carried out to determine nitrogen‐corrected apparent metabolizable energy (AMEn) values of processed wheat products with two levels of enzyme (0 and 0.5 g/kg) and five processing methods [control (C), water‐soaking for 12 h (SO12h), 24 h (SO24h) and 48 h (SO48h) and fermentation with lactobacillus (FL)] in two species of poultry (cockerel and Japanese quail). In this study, each processing method group had six replications with two cockerels or four quails per replication. The results showed that the calculated AMEn values of processed wheat by different methods were as follows: C‐12.61 and 12.60; SO12h‐12.75 and 12.73; SO24h‐12.80 and 12.79; SO48h‐12.97 and 12.96; and FL‐13.36 and 13.33 MJ/kg for cockerels and quails, respectively, indicating that fermentation improved AMEn values compared with the others. The mean AMEn of processed wheat with enzyme (13.12 MJ/kg) was significantly higher than that of processed wheat without enzyme (12.64 MJ/kg). However, there were no significant differences in the AMEn of processed wheat between cockerels and quails. The interaction between species and levels of enzyme in AMEn values was not significant. There was no significant difference (p > 0.05) in three‐way interactions among species, levels of enzyme and wheat processing methods for AMEn values. In conclusion, the results of the experiment suggest that the FL was more effective processing method of wheat to obtain high level of AMEn values than the others, and the combination of enzyme and processing methods can increase the AMEn values compared with processing methods alone.