Nutritional qualities of stabilized and raw rice bran for chicks

Rice bran either raw or processed in an extrusion cooker at 130 C was fed to meat strain chickens for 25 days after hatch. Either full fat or hexane-extracted rice bran was placed in the diet at the equivalent of 60% full fat bran. Raw full fat bran for one diet was stored at -23 C until fed, whereas rice bran for all other diets was stored at 32 C. Four experiments were conducted at 6-week intervals. Free fatty acid (FFA) content in oil from raw rice bran stored at the elevated temperature reached 81% by the start of the final experiment whereas FFA in stabilized bran oil remained at about 3%. Chickens fed stabilized rice bran made significantly greater gains than chickens fed raw bran diets. Feed efficiency was superior for chickens fed either full fat or extracted stabilized bran compared with full fat bran stored at either 32 or -23 C. Feed conversion for extracted raw bran was intermediate between stabilized bran and full fat raw bran. Raw bran stored at 32 C (with elevated FFA content) tended to produce lower gains than the frozen raw bran. Analysis of the combined data from all four trials indicated that raw bran held at 32 C produced the lowest gains among all of the diets.