Effects of fermented rapeseed meal on performance, intestinal morphology, the viscosity of intestinal content, phosphorus availability, and egg quality of laying hens

Fermented rapeseed meal has the poten-tial to partial replace soybean meal in feed mixtures for poultry without a negative impact on the health condi-tion and performance of birds. This is due to the fact that the fermentation process can reduce the amount of antinutritional factors, improve the use of nutrients and impart probiotic properties to rapeseed meal. Therefore, this study was undertaken to investigate the effect of fer-mented rapeseed meal on the performance, egg quality, intestinal morphometry, the viscosity of intestinal con-tent and total phosphorus availability. A total of 108 Lohmann Brown laying hens at 26 wk of age were used in the 90-day study. All hens were randomly divided into 3 treatment groups, with 12 replicates (cages) each, as follows: control group received no rapeseed meal, the URSM group received 3% unfermented rapeseed meal and the FRSM group received 3% fermented rapeseed meal. In the case of performance, egg traits, sensory eval-uation of eggs, the viscosity of intestinal content and the availability of total phosphorus, if the distribution was normal, a 1-way analysis of variance was performed. If the distribution was not normal, the Kruskal-Wallis test was performed. In the case of histomorphometric evalua-tion of the intestine, if the distribution was normal, the Student t test for independent samples was performed. If not, a Mann-Whitney U test was performed. The per-formed analyses showed that the supplementation of fer-mented rapeseed meal had no negative effect on the performance of birds and the quality of eggs. Fermented rapeseed meal was also associated with improved histo-morphometric parameters of the small intestine com-pared to the group receiving unfermented rapeseed meal in the feed. Laying hens from FRSM group were charac-terized by significantly lower viscosity of intestinal con-tent (P < 0.05) compared to URSM group. Phosphorus in FRSM group was significantly more available to the birds (P < 0.05) compared to URSM group. These results suggest that supplementation with fermented rapeseed meal may be beneficial, especially in times of unstable prices of soybean meal and problems with its availability.