Metabolic use of a growing diet for red-legged partridge (Alectoris rufa) chicks

Abstract

Red-legged partridge (Alectoris rufa) has an enormous ecological and game importance in Spain and is the favorite game species. Intensive breeding is used to restock areas, to re-establish or to maintain the population. More than 4 million birds/yr are released. Paradoxically, there is a lack of information about its protein and energy requirements, which has led to extrapolation of existing knowledge from other partridge species to A. rufa. The aim of this study was to determine the metabolic utilization of a specific commercial diet for growing partridge chicks. For this purpose, the feed conversion ratio (FCR), the efficiency of utilization of dietary ME for maintenance (k m), and the partition of retained energy (RE) as protein (REprot) and fat (REfat) were obtained.