Abstracts of Papers Presented at the 49th Annual Meeting of the Poultry Science Association

Abstract

LOWER REQUIREMENT FOR CYSTINE AND METHIONINE OF SCALELESS CHICKENSU. K. Abbott, V. S. Asmundson, K. T. ShortridgeUniversity of California, Davis, Calif.Beginning at 2 weeks of age, purified diets were fed to 8 groups of scaleless and 8 groups of normal birds of similar breeding. Half of the groups of each phenotype received a diet supplemented with an adequate level of DL methionine and half received a diet deficient in cystine and methionine.The four groups of normal birds receiving the deficient diet showed an immediate depression in growth rate. In contrast scaleless birds fed both diets grew at a rate equivalent to normal birds fed the adequate diet. On both diets, feed intake of scaleless was higher than that of normal birds fed the adequate diet. The lower feed efficiency of scaleless than of normal birds is attributed to their additional metabolic requirements in overcoming heat loss…