Response of growing goslings to dietary methionine from 28 to 70 days of age

Abstract

1. A dose–response experiment with 5 dietary methionine concentrations (2⋅3, 3⋅3, 4⋅3, 5⋅3 and 6⋅3 g/kg) was conducted with goslings to estimate the growth performance and carcase quality response of growing goslings to dietary methionine from 28 to 70 d of age.

2. A total of 150, 28-d-old birds were randomly distributed to 15 pens with 10 birds per pen according to similar pen weight. There were 5 dietary treatments, each containing three replicate pens. Weight gain, feed intake and feed/gain of goslings from each pen were measured at 2-week intervals from 28 to 70 d of age. At 70 d of age, 4 goslings were selected randomly from each pen and slaughtered to evaluate carcase quality.

3. Significant effects of dietary methionine on daily weight gain (28–56 d) and daily feed intake were determined. Daily weight gain from 28 to 42 d and 28 to 56 d, daily feed intake and gain/feed showed significant quadratic response to increasing dietary methionine, while abdominal fat proportion showed a significant linear response.

4. When dietary CP concentration was 158⋅2 g/kg, the optimal methionine concentrations for growing goslings from 28 to 42 d and 28 to 56 d of age for maximum daily weight gain were 4⋅07 and 4.14 g/kg, respectively.

Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the Scientific and Technical Support Program of the “Eleventh Five-Year Plan” of the Ministry of Science and Technology, P.R. China (2008BADB2B08) and Scientific and Technical Support Program of Jiangsu Province (BE2009351), P.R. China.