Standardized Ileal Amino Acid Digestibility of Red and White Pigeon Peas (Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp) in Broiler Chicks

This study evaluated the standardized ileal amino acid digestibility of two varieties of pigeon pea in broiler chicks.

The experiment was carried out at the Poultry Unit of the Teaching and Research Farm, University of Ibadan, Nigeria between May and July, 2019. Two hundred and forty (240) one-day old Abor Acre plus-strain broiler chicks were fed a commercial broiler starter diet for 15 days. On day 16, the birds were weighed, tagged and randomly allotted to 4 dietary treatments (Diet 1: Nitrogen Free Diet (NFD); Diet 2: Highly Digestible Protein (HDP); Diet 3: Red Pigeon Pea (RPP), Diet 4: White Pigeon Pea (WPP) with 6 replicates and 10 birds each in a randomized complete block design.

On day 21, birds were sacrificed and digesta collected from terminal ileum. The Endogenous Amino Acid Losses (EAAL), Apparent Ileal Amino Acid Digestibility (AIAAD), Standardized Ileal Amino Acid Digestibility (SIAAD) were estimated. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and ANOVA at P = .05.

Higher EAA flow (P < .001) was recorded in lysine and aspartic acid for NFD while endogenous alanine flow was higher in HDP. Arginine had the lowest apparent digestibility values for both WPP and RPP. Apparent digestibility values of histidine, phenylalanine, valine, aspartic acid, glycine, proline and serine in WPP were significantly (P = .05) higher than in RPP with their corresponding higher (P = .05) SID values. Arginine had the lowest SIAAD value when AIAAD was corrected with HDP or NFD. In conclusion, WPP had higher CP level as well as higher digestibility values for some amino acids than RPP. The method used for standardization did not affect SIAAD values corrected with NFD or HDP for WPP and RPP respectively. Therefore, either of the two methods can be used to correct for endogenous amino acid losses.