The Effects of Dietary Supplementation of Feather Meal Digests on the Performances and Muscular Taurine Contents in Broiler Chickens

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of dietary supplementation of feather meal(FM) and its digests on the performance of broiler chicks and taurine content in broiler meat. A total of 100 broiler chickens were assigned to five dietary treatments; Control, FM diet(FM), NaOH treated FM diet(NaOH FM), -HNO3 treated FM diet(HNO3 FM) and 0.5% synthetic taurine supplemented diet(Taurine). Treated diets were supplemented with FM or FM digests at the level of 5% to the control diet. Treated diets were fed during the last 3wks of 6wks feeding. During the finisher period, weight gain of chicks fed FM treatments tended to decrease in general. Feed intakes of FM and Taurine were significantly lower than the control but were not significantly different from NaOH FM or HNO3 FM. Feed conversion rate(feed intake/gain) of NaOH FM -was significantly higher than those of FM and HNO3 FM but not different from those of the control and Taurine. Taurine content of the control was highest in heart muscle(1482μg/g) followed by leg muscle(778μg/g) and breast muscle(79μg/g). Taurine contents of leg and breast muscle were significantly(P < 0.01) affected by treatments but that of heart muscle was not. Taurine content of Taurine treatments was highest in both leg and breast muscle. Taurine content of leg muscle was increased 170% by Taurine supplementation, 123% by FM supplementation, 122% by NaOH FM supplementation and 63% by HNO3 FM supplementation compared with control. Taurine content of breast muscle of Taurine treatment was 246% higher than the control, but other treatments were not different from the control. In conclusion, supplementation of feather meal at 5% level of broiler diet can enrich taurine content of leg muscle. Chemical treatments of FM were not effective in improving taurine enrichment of broiler meat.