Nutritional and metabolic response of adult spitz dogs fed pearl millet (Pennisetum typhoides) based diets to exogenous enzyme supplementation

An experiment was conducted to study the effect of exogenous multi-enzyme supplementation to pearl millet (Pennisetum typhoides) based homemade diet for dogs. The experiment was carried out in a complete crossover design having two periods of 14 days each using five adult Spitz dogs. A commercial multi-enzyme (containing amylase, cellulase, phytase, xylanase, β-glucanase, pectinase and protease) was supplemented at 0.75 g/kg feed. The results indicated that the of total tract digestibility of DM, protein, fat, fibre and carbohydrates were without any significant (P>0.05) difference between the two groups. The mean faecal concentrations of acetate (P=0.146) and propionate (P=0.067) tended to increase upon enzyme supplementation, resulting in a trend of greater (P=0.112) total short-chain fatty acids compared to control. The molar proportion between acetate, propionate and butyrate, however, did not show any influence of the dietary intervention. There was no influence of enzyme supplementation on most of the plasma metabolites except for alkaline phosphatase, which tended (P=0.090) to be higher in the enzyme supplemented group than the control. The mean plasma values of creatinine (P<0.05) was reduced significantly upon enzyme supplementation while that of plasma sodium and potassium were higher (P<0.05) in enzyme-supplemented group than the control. The study reveled that although there are subtle changes in the indices for hind gut fermentation, supplementation of enzyme at 0.75 g/kg of pearl millet based homemade diet had no apparent influence on the nutrient digestibility.