Modeling the amino acid requirements of male turkeys from 0 to 21 weeks of age

Abstract

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] An experiment was conducted to determine the effects of diets formulated using the ideal protein concept and modeled amino acid requirements with diet phase changes based on the cost of the rations on production and economic performance of male turkeys from 0-21 weeks of age. A total of 480 birds were randomly assigned to four treatments with 6 replicate pens. The positive control (PC) diet was a typical industry diet with traditional 21-day diet phase changes, and was formulated on a crude protein and total amino acid basis. The experimental diets were formulated using ideal protein ratios on a digestible amino acid basis. Amino acid, metabolizable energy and phosphorus requirements were modeled for the experimental rations, and a set of 147 diets were formulated to represent daily nutritional requirements. The ideal protein negative control (IPNC) treatment was based on traditional 21-day diet phase changes. Two additional treatments (Ideal Protein Diet Change 1 (IPDC1) and Ideal Protein Diet Change 2 (IPDC2)) changed diets at varying intervals based on the price of the diets. At the conclusion of the trial, it was determined that changing diet intervals did not work well as the IPDC1 and IPDC2 treatments resulted in significantly reduced body weight gain (P < 0.05), and would not result in cost savings. The IPNC treatment was most cost effective, and resulted in the lowest cost per unit of gain with a savings of 4.5 cents/pound of body weight gain over the traditional PC diet. However, body weight gain and feed intake was intermediate in the IPNC group, and was significantly lower (P < 0.05) than the PC group and higher (P < 0.05) than the IPDC1 and IPDC2 groups. No differences in feed conversion or percent carcass yield were observed.