Protein quality of poultry by-product meal manufactured from whole fowl co-extruded with corn or wheat

Department of Animal Sciences, Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, The Ohio State University, Wooster 44691, USA.

Three experiments were conducted with turkey poults to characterize the protein quality of a novel poultry by-product meal composed of aged fowl extruded with either corn (CHM) or wheat (WHM). In Experiment 1, a growth assay was conducted to determine a dietary protein response range for semipurified diets containing CHM or WHM as the sole sources of dietary protein. Diets contained 12, 15, and 18% CP, and there was a linear increase in BW with no significant differences between the 2 sources. The same dietary protein levels were used to determine the protein efficiency ratio (PER), net protein ratio (NPR), and apparent amino acid digestibility of CHM and WHM in Experiments 2 and 3. In Experiment 3, WHM and CHM were also compared with soybean meal (SBM) and meat and bone meal (MBM). In Experiment 2, there were no significant differences between CHM and WHM in PER or NPR, but the variability between levels of CP did account for a significant level of CP x source interaction (P < 0.05). In Experiment 3, there were no significant protein level effects on PER or NPR, but the values for MBM were consistently lower than those for CHM, WHM, and SBM. The apparent amino acid digestibility coefficients for MBM were also consistently lower than those for CHM and WHM. In conclusion, the extruded WHM and CHM products have acceptable protein quality and were better than MBM as single sources of dietary protein.