Adaptation of chicken pancreatic secretory functions to feed composition

SUMMARYPoultry farming is the fastest growing sector of agriculture. Balanced diets are an important factor for realisation of the genetic potential of birds. The pancreas plays an important role in the digestive process. The aim of the review is to describe the adaptation of chicken pancreatic secretory functions to a diet with various protein and fat ingredients. Due to the fact that digestive enzymes correlate with nutrient absorption, basic knowledge of pancreatic secretion can be useful to improve poultry nutrition and the economics of the poultry industry in general. The consumption of soy cake instead of sunflower cake (with a 1.5% increase in dietary crude fat) led to an increase in the activity of pancreatic juice lipase by 33.8%. A slight increase in crude protein in the feed (by 0.5%) led to an increase in proteolytic activity by 28.1% compared to the background period. The consumption of sunflower oil instead of soybean, rapeseed and linseed oil in the diet led to a decrease in the activity of pancreatic juice lipase by 42.2%, 57.6% and 19.1%, respectively. It could be concluded that in chickens there is no strict parallelism in the release of the pancreatic enzymes and there is no clear adaptation to a specific feed component.