1. The availability of lysine in four meat meals (MMs), four meat and bone meals (MBMs) and two blood meals was determined using the slope-ratio assay with growing pigs, rats and chicks and with two chemical techniques.2. The availability of lysine (proportion of total) in the eight MMs or MBMs ranged from 0.48 to 0.88 for pigs, from 0-49 to 0.88 for rats and from 0.68 to 0.88 for chicks. There was no apparent relation between the availability estimates for pigs, rats and chicks for the individual meals.3. For the two blood meals, availability estimates were 1.03 and 1.13 for pigs, 0.81 and 0.80 for rats and 1.07 and 1.02 for chicks.4. Values for the indirect and direct 1-fluoro-2,4-dinitrobenzene-'available'-lysine assays ranged from 0.77 to 0.88 and 0.78 to 0.93 respectively for the eight MMs and MBMs. There appeared to be no relation between these values and the pig estimates.Previous work indicated that meat meal (MM) and meat and bone meal (MBM) were of low quality for pigs (Batterham et a!. 1978) with an available lysine content (proportion of total) in MBM of 0.49 (Batterham et al. 1979). This low availability may be due to the composition of the material used to produce the meal (flesh, collagen and bone) or to processing conditions.The low lysine availability in MBM for pigs was not detected by either the indirect- ( (Fox, 1971 ; E. S. Batterham and R. F. Lowe, unpublished results). If this range in values could be shown to be related to the range in lysine availability in MMs and MBMs for pigs, then the technique would be suitable for predicting availability.Lysine availability for pigs may also be determined with slope-ratio assays using rats (Batterham et al. 1984). However, this work has shown that the technique only has application for some meals (cottonseed, soya-bean and sunflower meals) but not others (lupin-seed meal). Thus there is a need to determine if the rat assay is applicable with MMs and MBMs for pigs.With chicks, lysine availability in the same sample of MBM was 0.86 (Major & Batterham, 1981) indicating that chicks were more efficient in utilizing lysine in MBM than the pig. There was also closer agreement between the chick value and the indirect-FDNB
E. s. BATTERHAM A N D O T H E R Slysine assay (0.84). However, there is a need to examine a wider range of indirect-FDNB values in MMs and MBMs in order to assess the applicability of this technique for estimating lysine availability for chicks.Processing conditions for blood meals have also been shown to affect total and chemical-'available' (direct-FDNB assay) lysine (Waibel et al. 1977) with ring-dried material being of higher quality than batch-dried material. However, the relevance of chemical estimates for 'availability' in blood meal for pigs needs to be assessed.The present paper reports experiments that were conducted with pigs, rats and chicks to determine the availability of lysine in four MMs, four MBMs and two blood meals. The MMs and MBMs were selected to include meals of both low-and high-bone content and covered the no...