observed that dietary supplementation of 30 g/kg chitosan significantly reduced body weights and feed intakes of broiler
chickens compared with those fed on control diets on days 5 and 11 of the experiment, and Walsh et al. (2013) obtained similar results in pigs.
As
a possible explanation for these divergences the
authors hypothesized that in different experiments
different doses of chitosan had been used.
The results of this study demonstrated that diets
supplemented with chitosan promoted the ADG of
weaned piglets, which was in agreement with the
results of Tang et al. (2005).
Because feed intake is
one of the major factors limiting growth in young
pigs, weight gain accompanies the improvement
in feed intake. Previous study suggested that one
possible reason for the improved growth performance
with dietary chitosan supplementation was
the increased feed intake (Yuan and Chen, 2012).