Population expansion during the recent years and the problems of producing food especially animal protein is one of the main concerns. Barley, which is plant more than corn in IRAN, is not usually used in poultry rations. This is mainly because of a Polysaccharide named B-D-glucan in barley which is not degradable by poultry digestive enzymes.
Two separately different trails were conducted in this research. In first trail four different process were used in attend to increase the metabolizable energy of barley. These are as follow:
1- Socking barley in water for four different periods of 8.12.16 and 24 hours.
2- Socking barley in rumen contents for three periods of 8, 12 and 16 hours.
3- Adding and commercially available enzyme named "Bio Feed" at four levels of 0.25, 0.5, 1.0 and 2.0 gr/kg of barley.
4- Adding a Cultured enzyme from organism named Trichoderma Viride at four different levels of 50, 100, 200 and 400 mg/kg of barley.
The gross energy (GE), apparent metabolizable energy (AME), apparent metabolizable energy corrected for nitrogen (AMEn), true metabolizable energy (IME) and true metabolizable energy corrected for nitrogen (TMEn) were measured in process and unprocess barley.
The result of the first trail indicated that all above metabolizable energy of barley were increased in comparison the unprocessed barley, due to the process used and (TME) was calculated to be 3.735, 3.726, 3.695, 3.666 and 3.497 kcal/gr of drymater for barley processed with "Bio-feed", enzyme from Trichoderma Viride, water, rumen content and unprocessed barley respectively.
In Second trail feed formulation of diets for commercial layers were carried out based on the metabolizable energy of barley measured in first trail in order to found the best levels of barley in their lation. In this trail which lasted nine weeks on 288 layers in a RD dosage corn Content of the diet were replaced by processed and unprocessed barley at the levels of 0, 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100 percent.
Feed consumption, feed efficiency, egg production, and internal egg quality were higher when up to 60 percent of the total corn of the diet was replaced by barley. The levels of 80 and 100 percent showed the lower performance than the control group (0% barley).