• Korean Journal of Poultry Science
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.291-297
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• 2015

We investigated the effects of dietary pearlzyme (mudflat-bacteria origin protease) on growth performance and development of digestive organs in broilers. Two hundred forty, 4 day-old female Ross broiler chicks were divided into 2 groups (control vs. pearlzyme) which were randomly housed in 8 pens with 15 chicks/pen. They were fed one of two diets containing pearlzyme at 0 or 0.1% for 4 weeks. Dietary pearlzyme resulted in significant increase in body weight during the first week of the experiment (p<0.05). With age, weight gain and feed efficiency continued to decrease reaching significant level during the last week. Mortality was 3.3% in control but not in pearlzyme during the entire period of the experiment. Dietary pearlzyme resulted in increased weight (p<0.05) in the ceca and rectum, and increased length in the ceca (p<0.05). However, there were tendencies to increase the weight of the gizzard (p<0.071) but to decrease the length of the small intestine (p<0.068). The results of the current study show that dietary pearlzyme affects weight gain and the development of digestive organs.