Nonruminant Nutrition: Enzyme Supplementation and Methodology.

The article presents abstracts of various papers related to animal nutrition that were presented during the symposium held on July 27, 2005 in Cincinnati, Ohio, which was organized by the American Dairy Science Association, the American Society of Animal Science, and the Canadian Society of Animal Science. One of the papers discussed is "Nutrient Digestibility in Microbial Phytase Supplemented Corn-Soybean Based Diets in Two Phases of Growing Pigs," by H. Krebs, C.T. Kadzere, Z. Liu, and E. van Heugten. Phytate phosphorus (P) makes up 40 to 90% of P in cereal grains and in oilseeds and is unavailable to swine except when supplementary phytase is in the diet. In a 4 x 4 CRD study, 16 male castrated pigs were assigned to four homogenous groups of four animals each to evaluate the effects of microbial phytase on nutrient digestibility in pigs in Phase I and in Phase II. Each group was fed one of four diets differing only in P, calcium and phytase content. Another paper discussed is "Effect of Phytase Activity of the Diets on the Faecal and Urinary Phosphorous Excretion in Adult Roosters," by J. Tossenberger, L. Babinszky and I. Kuhn. The effect of phytase on phosphorus (P) excretion of poultry has been customarily determined in studies with intact birds based on collection of excreta. By using cannulation techniques, it is possible to measure faecal and urinary P excretion separately.