Effect of Slow and Rapid Peroxidation of Corn Oil on the Performance and Energy Storage of Broiler Chicks

The extraction of corn oil from DDGS has led to an increase in the utilization of coil oil in poultry diets. This corn oil has the opportunity to undergo peroxidation during storage or processing. Therefore it is important to understand the effects of peroxidation of corn oil on growth and performance of broiler chicks. Broiler chicks were provided corn-soybean based diets containing unperoxidized corn oil (UPO), slowly peroxidized corn oil (SO; heated for 72 h at 95ᵒC), and rapidly peroxidized corn oil (RO; heated for 7 h at 185ᵒC). Corn oil was added at a 5% inclusion 0- 14 d and 10% inclusion 15-27 d. A fourth treatment consisted of a supplemental oil-free diet to be used to determine the apparent metabolizable energy nitrogen corrected (AMEn) of each corn oil diet. As expected the diets without supplemental oil resulted in reduced performance, but no significant differences were observed among oil-supplemented birds for body weight gain, feed intake, or feed conversion ratio (FCR). There was a significant difference in abdominal fat pad (AFP) weights of the broilers fed RO corn oil compared to the birds fed UPO corn oil. Analysis of samples for AMEn content is underway and will be reported shortly. Corn oil peroxidation status had minimal effects on broiler performance, but did result in differences in energy utilization as indicated by AFP weight