| Summary: | Palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD) is a by-product of palm oil (P) refining. Its use in chicken diets is a way to reduce the cost of feed and the environmental impact. Its low unsaturated:saturated fatty acid ratio (UFA:SFA) and its high free fatty acid (FFA) level could be partially counteracted by its blending with soybean oil (S). The objective was to assess the effect of replacing S with different levels of PFAD on lipid-class content and fatty acid (FA) digestibility along the intestinal tract and in the excreta of 11 and 35-day-old broiler chickens. Five experimental diets were prepared by supplementing a basal diet with S (S6), PFAD (PA6), two blends of them (S4-PA2 and S2-PA4), or P (P6) at 6%. Replacing S with PFAD did not affect performance parameters (<i>p</i> > 0.05) but negatively affected feed AME, FA digestibility, and FFA intestinal content (<i>p</i> < 0.05), especially in starter chicks. Including PFAD delayed total FA (TFA) absorption (<i>p</i> < 0.05) at 11 days, but at 35 days it did not affect the TFA absorption rate. The use of PFAD blended with S, when FFA ≤ 30% and UFA:SFA ≥ 2.6, led to adequate energy utilization in broiler grower-finisher diets.
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