Research Notes A COMPARISON OF COMMERCIAL ANIMAL PROTEIN FACTOR SUPPLEMENTS IN CHICK STARTER DIETS

An increase in growth rate from the addition of various animal protein factor (APF) supplements to all vegetable pro-tein diets has been demonstrated by many workers. However, there are few published reports giving a direct com-parison of the effects of such supplements when added to practical diets. Seven treatments are compared in the. trials reported in this paper. Quadrupli-cate pens, 10 birds per pen, were used for each treatment, and the chicks and treat-ments were assigned to the pens at ran-dom. Female New Hampshire chicks obtained from a commercial hatchery were used. The composition of the basal diet per 100 lbs. was as follows: ground yellow corn 27.5, ground oats 12.5, rolled oat groats 7.0, ground barley 6.0, dehydrated alfalfa meal 3.0, ground wheat 15.0, soy-bean oil meal (solvent) 26.0, steamed bone meal 1.0, fortified fish oil (2400 A-400 D) 0.24, salt (iodized) 0.6, ground limestone 1.0, MnS04.4H20 9.00 gm., choline chloride (25 percent concentrate) 85.6 gm., riboflavin premix (1 gm. riboflavin per oz.) 2.84 gm. Protein content (NX6.25) was approximately 20 percent for all diets. APF supplements1 were added at the expenses of the corn, and the fish meal incorporated by replacing part of the soybean oil meal and adding corn. Composition of the experimental diets and results are given in Table 1. The results suggest that supplements B and C carry a growth promoting factor 1 Supplements A, B and C were supplied b