PXmaFAudience: Egg Producers, Nutritionists, Renderers DESCRIPTION OF PROBLEM

maintains approximately 240,000,000 hens in production. Considering the length of the laying cycle, molting programs, and down time between flocks, some 144,OoO,O00 hens are available for processing yearly. Historically, the majority of the hens have been utilized in pot pies and soup. The in-dustry has been faced with processing hens that have been selected for smaller body size. They also have a problem with brittle bones during processing. Due to the smaller body size and bone problem, there has been a shift away from the use of spent hens and toward the use of broiler and roaster type buds to provide meat and soup stock. This change has left some egg producers with-out a spent hen market, necessitating the disposal of these birds through composting or burying. The utilization of the spent hen as a feed-stuff could provide a positive economic return as well as eliminate a potential disposal prob-lem. Previous work reported by Haque et al. [l] demonstrated that extrusion processing of complete diets containing freshly ground whole hens produced nutritionally adequate broiler diets. This study evaluated the effect of heating or dehydrating ground spent hens in a fluidized bed oven in combination with steeping in an insulated chamber or extruding to produce feedstuffs. MATERIALS AND METHODS Several types of spent hen ingredients were developed using different processing techniques for nutritional evaluation. The processes involve four separate pieces of 1 Contribution from the Missouri Agricultural Experiment Station Journal Series Number 12,294. The use of trade names in this publication implies neither endorsement by the Missouri Agricultural Experiment Station of the equipment mentioned nor criticism of similar equipment not mentioned. 2 To whom correspondence should be addresse