Effect of canola meal source on broiler performance

Canola meal is a potentially competitive alternation to soybean meal in poultry feed formulations. However, variation in metabolisable energy, digestible amino acids and the presence of glucosinolate (GS) limits its inclusion level in broiler diets. A feeding study was conducted to compare performance of broilers fed canola meals produced by solvent extraction (SE), expeller extraction (EE) and cold expeller extraction (CE) methods. Seven canola meals were formulated into wheat-soybean meal based diets at 100 g/kg to 10 days and 200 g/kg from 10 to 24 days taking into account assumed oil and protein content as per their method of production. A non-canola meal treatment served as a control. Canola meal samples were analysed for GS, reactive lysine (RL) by 1-fluoro-2,4-dinitro-benzene (FDNB, Carpenter, 1960) or guanidination with ortho-methyl isourea (OMIU, Rutherford and Moughin, 1997) using NIRS prediction (DPI, Wagga Wagga, NSW) and heat damage index (HDI) using NIRS (Amino Red®, Evonik Singapore).