No abstract

A culture filtrate from Trichoderma viride was used as a source of cellulose degrading enzymes. This filtrate, when added to a barley ration fed to chicks, improved growth and feed efficiency by 19% and 8%, respectively. The response was saturable since increasing amounts of filtrate above 50 mg/kg produced no further improvement. Barley eta-glucan was added to a corn-based diet (10 g/kg) to evaluate the effect of the culture filtrate on the viscosity of beta-glucan in the chick intestinal contents. Barley beta-glucan increased the viscosity of the supernatant of the chick intestinal contents threefold and the culture filtrate reduced the viscosity to near control levels when combined with the diet containing beta-glucan. The presence of beta-glucan in barley probably limits growth of chicks by increasing viscosity of intestinal contents.

No abstract

A rotating cylinder viscometer was described which was modeled after a Zimm viscometer. Regression of power input (watts) to the instrument versus angular velocity (radians per second) for standard fluids at fixed temperature produced linear equations with intercepts at the origin. The ratio of the slopes of these lines to the slope for water produced values that were good estimates of the relative viscosity of the standard fluids. The instrument was capable of determining the relative viscosity of .75 ml of intestinal fluid taken from young growing chicks.