THE INCREASE OF RICE BRAN QUALITY AS FEEDING OF DUCKS BY KHAMIR BIOFERMENTATION

The use of rice bran as a mixture of poultry feed has a fairly large contribution, which is about 25-30% of all components of duck feed. This is because the price of bran is relatively cheap, does not compete with humans, and the amount is abundant during the rice harvest season (Rasyaf, 2002). It was also stated that the limitation of using rice bran as a mixture of poultry feed was its low protein content, easy rancidity, and the presence of phytic acid which was able to bind Ca and P minerals, and bind proteins to complex phytats which had an impact on decreasing its benefits and digestibility. Therefore, rations using components of rice bran which are quite high (20-30%) need to be carried out with biotechnology engineering. Easy and inexpensive biotechnology for that is fermentation biotechnology by utilizing the services of microbes which also can later function as probiotics in the digestive tract of ducks.

According to Bidura (2007), the advantage of fermentation by microbes is being able to change macroeconomic proteins into micro molecules that are easily digested by poultry and do not produce toxic chemical compounds. Also reported, besides being able to increase the protein content in the ration, the fermentation process can also increase the digestibility of feed and can release the bonds of complex compounds into compounds that are easily digested.

An interesting fermented yeast to try to improve the value of rice bran is Saccharomyces spp yeast isolated from yeast tape. Some researchers report that the use of yeast as a fermentation inoculant can significantly increase the protein content of feed and vice versa markedly reduce the content of crude fiber feed (Widiyazid et al., 2002). The results of Londra (2007) report that fermented market waste turns out to have a 62.69% protein content that is significantly higher than without fermentation, whereas the crude fiber content decreases significantly.

Widiyanto et al. (1994) reported, when fermented by yeast, the crude fiber content of the ration was degraded by these microbes, so that it could be utilized by poultry. Other properties of fermented feed products as reported by Tanaka et al. (1992) that the use of fermented product feed ingredients was able to suppress the activity of the enzyme 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl Co-A reductase which functions to synthesize cholesterol in the liver. The use of fermented products in rations significantly reduces the amount of chicken body fat (Kataren et al., 1999).