A Comparison of Shrimp ‘Bran’ and Two Kinds of Fish Meal when Fed at a Level of Ten Per Cent in Diets for Growing Chicks

Abstract

During the last two years the United States Department of Agriculture has received a number of inquiries regarding the nutritive value of different marine products, particularly shrimp “bran,” whole-fish meal, and fish-offal meal, when fed to poultry. The lack of comparative experimental feeding data on these three products made it desirable to conduct a feeding experiment with growing chicks to find out if any differences in growth would be obtained when these products supplied an appreciable part of the total protein of the chick’s diet. From a practical point of view, it seemed best to use diets containing the same percentage of these products, rather than the same percentage of protein derived from them. Accordingly, three pens of baby chicks were started on diets containing 10 per cent shrimp “bran,” 10 per cent menhaden fish meal, and 10 per cent North Atlantic fish meal, respectively, and growth and feed consumption .