Digestible Sulfur Amino Acid Requirements for Male Turkeys to Five Weeks of Age

Abstract

Previous research with batteries has been conducted to determine the digestible sulfur amino acid (SAA) requirements of hen turkeys. These trials were conducted under floor pen conditions to determine the digestible SAA requirement of male turkeys for the production period to 5 wk. The first experiment used 48 pens with eight treatments of six replicate pens using a randomized block design and 768 7-d-old toms. Digestible SAA levels ranged from 0.60 to 1.00% of the diet in 0.06% increments. These levels were obtained by titrating synthetic methionine into a lowprotein diet. In the second experiment, 288 male poults were used beginning at 21 d of age. Digestible methionine ranged from 0.57 to 0.95% of the diet in 0.05% increments. The other supplemental amino acids were added back to the low-protein diets at sufficient levels to provide performance similar to birds fed a positive control diet. The positive control diets for the experiments were standard corn-soybean meal and meat meal diets based on NRC [1] recommendations containing 28 and 26% crude protein, respectively. Growth parameters measured for the trial were body weight gain and feed conversion. The data were analyzed by ANOVA followed by breakpoint analysis. The digestible SAA requirements for the 7-to-16-d growth period were determined to be 0.83 and 0.82% for body weight gain and feed conversion, respectively. For the 21-to-35-d period, the requirement was determined to be 0.78 and 0.77% for weight gain and feed:gain, respectively.