Evaluation of different dietary alterations in their ability to mitigate the incidence and severity of woody breast and white striping in commercial male broilers

Abstract

The following study was conducted to define how multiple nutritional strategies affect broiler performance, meat yield, and the presence and severity of white striping (WS) and woody breast (WB) in high-yielding broilers. Relative to a commercial set of reference broiler diets (Commercial reference diet; Trt 1) that were fed in a 4-phase program, the following nutritional strategies were investigated: increasing the ratio of digestible arginine: digestible lysine (dArg: dLys ranged from 113 to 126; Trt 2), supplementing Trt 1 with 94.4 mg vitamin C/kg feed (Trt 3), doubling the vitamin pack inclusion rate (Trt 4), reducing the digestible amino acid density (dAA) of only the grower phase by 15% and feeding the same Trt 1 starter, finisher, and withdraw diets (Trt 5), and combining the 4 strategies just mentioned (Trt 6). There was no difference in performance at the end of the starter phase (P = 0.066); however, at the end of the grower and finisher phases, feeding lower dAA grower diets suppressed BW (Trts 5 and 6; P < 0.001) and increased FCR. Differences in performance amongst all treatments disappeared at day 49 (P = 0.220). No differences were observed in average breast weight (P = 0.188); however, breast yield (as a % of live weight) was greatest for Trt 1 and least for Trt 6 (P = 0.041). The WB score dropped from 1.83 in Trt 1 to 1.49, 1.27, 1.74, 1.53, and 1.43 in treatments 2 to 6, respectively (P = 0.018). These changes were the result of a shift in WB score, where the WB class that contained scores of 2 and 3 shifted from 61.3% in Trt 1 to 49.3, 35.9, 60.0, 50.8, and 38.7 in treatments 2 to 6, respectively. Given the FCR, breast weight data and the fact that high WB scores result in a devaluation of breast meat, feeding a higher ratio of dArg: dLys, higher vitamin C, or lower dAA in the grower phase results in better breast meat quality and value.

Effect of dietary arginine to lysine ratios on productive performance, meat quality, plasma and muscle metabolomics profile in fast-growing broiler chickens

“…It has been previously reported that the administration of diets with an Arg:Lys ratio of 0.95 and 1.25 exerted no significant effect on the occurrence of WS and WB in 53-day-old broilers [ 49 ]. Bodle et al [ 17 ] recently reported that increasing the digestible Arg:Lys ratio from approximately 111–113% to 120–125% reduced the severity of WB while had no effects on WS.…”

“…Nitric oxide has shown marked vasodilator properties [ 9 ] and it could enhance blood flow to the breast muscle alleviating the hypoxic condition usually observed in breasts affected by severe woody breast (WB) or white striping (WS) myopathies [ 15 , 16 ]. Very recently, Bodle et al [ 17 ] showed that WB, but not WS, average score was significantly reduced by increasing the level of dietary arginine.…”

Wooden‐Breast, White Striping, and Spaghetti Meat: Causes, Consequences and Consumer Perception of Emerging Broiler Meat Abnormalities

“…On the other hand, a slight reduction of moderate cases of WB has been obtained by dietary supplementation of guanidinoacetic acid used a precursor of creatine, but strong interaction with diet composition was found (Cordoba‐Noboa et al., ,b). Recently, it was demonstrated that an increase of arginine:lysine ratio can have a mitigation effect on breast meat abnormalities (Zampiga, Soglia, Petracci, Meluzzi, & Sirri, ) though a similar study led to a divergent outcome (Bodle et al., ). Therefore, until now it seems that there is lack of practical nutrition and management interventions to reduce growth‐related abnormalities in the broiler industry without negatively affecting live and slaughter performances.…”

Effects of broiler genetic strain and dietary amino acid reduction on (part I) growth performance and internal organ development

“…Previous studies have shown that BW decreases and FCR increases during early protein dilution and feed restriction. However, these can be recovered by day 44 to 49 in various strains of broilers ( Rezaei and Hajati, 2010 , Bodle et al., 2018 ). Nevertheless, an excessive reduction in dietary AA may impact internal organ development and decrease meat deposition ( Zhan et al., 2006 ).…”