Crude protein requirement of growing cockerels by diet dilution technique

Measurement of crude protein requirement of cockerel finishers by two empirical methods

“…Table 4 shows the effects of the graded CP levels, as per the two methods, on the response criteria measured. As observed in the earlier studies (Salami & Boorman, 1999;Salami, personal communication), the response criteria were improved significantly as the CP level increased up to 18 per cent CP level. Beyond this level, performance in weight gain, feed conversion ratio and protein efficiency ratio tended to deteriorate, indicating that protein in excess of requirement was harmful to the birds.…”

“…Thus, Diets B and F, which contained 18 per cent CP, satisfied the cockerel finishers' requirement. This dietary CP level also minimizes the feed cost per unit of weight gain as in antecedent reports; for example, Salami & Boorman (1999). The similarity in the response pattern of cockerels to treatment diets produced by both methods confirms that they are equally good in predicting the CP requirements of the finishing cockerels.…”

“…Similarly, Salami (1985) reported that the traditional method and diet dilution technique are equally good in estimating the tryptophan requirements of young broiler chickens. On the strength of this evidence, the diet dilution technique has also been applied to study the CP requirements of growing cockerels (Salami & Boorman, 1999) and cockerel starters (Salami, Akindoye & Hamzat, 2002), crude protein and energy requirements of cockerel starters (Salami, Akindoye & Akanni, 2003) and cockerel finishers (Salami, personal communication). However, no study has to date been reported that compared both methods for measuring CP requirement.…”