The study was carried out with an objective of studying in-vitro nutrient digestibility and quality evaluation of dog foods incorporated with 15% rice gluten and 2.5% maize fibre and its comparison with commercially available dog food for its nutritional worth and physical quality parameters. After standardization of diets, raw diets were subjected to different processing techniques viz. boiling and extrusion. Boiling of feed reduced the ether extract content of diets. The in-vitro analysis of dog feed involved two incubation phases: first, gastric digestion simulation at 39ºC for 2h in HCl solution in presence of pepsin and gastric lipase enzyme; second, small intestine digestion simulation at 39ºC for 4h using bile salts and pancreatin in phosphate buffer solution. Statistical analysis revealed that boiling of diet reduced the in-vitro digestibility of ether extract. Among different processing techniques, in-vitro digestibility was best in-case of extruded diets. In-vitro digestibility of CP had nonsignificant difference among different processing techniques; however CPD of boiled dog feed with 15% RG used dog feed was comparable with extruded and raw diet. Comparative evaluation of best preformed extruded feeds with commercial diets revealed that all diets had equal nutritional digestibility of various nutrients. pH, FFA, PV and aflatoxin content of feeds were within permissible limits. It was concluded that RG and MF can be included in dog diet at 15 and 2.5% level respectively showing equal digestibility of feed.

Highlights

• Processing such as extrusion significantly improved the in-vitro digestibility of various nutrients.
• In-vitro studies confirmed the non-significant differences among commercial and GADVASU prepared feeds.