Sweet potatoes flour (Ipomoea potatoes) as a starch source in extruded dog food

Abstract

With growth, increased competitiveness and humanization of dogs, foods with special and functional appeals have grown in the market. Among these, Grain free dog foods, with substitution of cereals for legumes and tubers are now an important part of the new feed launches. In this context, the sweet potato (Ipomoea potatoes) presents itself with interesting ingredient, being employed in Grain free foods, although no studies for dogs on this raw material are located in the scientific literature. The objective of this work will be to evaluate the effect of growing inclusions of sweet potatoes, added in place of rice grits as a source of starch for dogs, on the digestibility of nutrients, formation of faeces and palatability of feed. The study will include 4 diets, for this 1 control diet based on rice grits will be formulated for dog maintenance (FEDIAF, 2018) and 3 treatment diets will be produced by replacing 33%, 67% and 100% of the rice grits by whole sweet potato flour. The other ingredients in the formula will not be changed. The diets will be extruded at the FCAV/Unesp feed factory. 24 healthy adult beagle dogs will be employed. These will be divided into 2 complete blocks of 12 dogs, with 3 dogs per diet in each totalized block 6 experimental repetitions (dogs) per diet. Each block will last 20 days, from day 1 to day 14 adapting to diets and from day 15 to day 20 total collection of faeces for digestibility testing, with animals individually housed in metabolic cages. The palatability of the food will be tested by testing two canisters in a kennel with a minimum of 38 animals by comparison. The results shall be submitted to variance analysis, considering block, diet and animal effects. If there are differences in test F, averages will be compared by polynomial contrasts according to the inclusion content of sweet potato flour. For all tests it will be considered significance of 5%.