Effects of 65 parts of DL-methionine replacing 100 parts of MHA-FA on growth performance in broiler diets
In this trial under trial farm conditions, PROXYMet™ and MHA-FA showed the same growth performance in Ross 308 male broilers. Regarding slaughter performance, PROXYMet™ even achieved better results than MHA-FA. This trial confirmed the bioefficacy of 65% for MHA-FA compared to DL-methionine in broilers, regardless of the supplementation level, and the potential to reduce feed costs with DL-methionine.
The customer was convinced by the results and decided to switch from MHA-FA to MetAMINO® (DL-methionine, DLM) for parts of his feeds.
Senior Business Manager, Evonik China
The objective of this study was to compare the effects of different levels of MHA-FA and DL-methionine (DLM) on the growth performance and carcass traits of broilers to further validate the 65% bioefficacy of MHA-FA. The findings aim to provide scientific evidence for the choice of methionine sources in the feed industry.
Location: Pingdu, Shandong province, China
Project team leaders: Dr. Lorin Zhang, Dr. Tom Han
| Animals | 1,848 one-day-old Ross 308 male broilers |
| Design | Completely randomized design of 7 treatments (T1-T7) with 6 replicates per treatment, 33 birds each; using a 2 x 3 + 1 factorial arrangement with 2 sources of methionine (MHA-FA and PROXYMet™) and 3 levels of supplementation |
| Housing | 3-layer large cage rearing system |
| Diets | Corn-soybean meal-based commercial broiler feed Treatment T1: Treatments T2-T3-T4: Treatments T5-T6-T7: |
| Feeding | Broilers were fed in a cage system under NHL’s trial farm conditions |
| Parameters | Growth performance: Slaughter performance: |
| Duration | 38 days |
Trial results
- The results of the trial showed that the control group had the lowest body weight (P<0.05) during the 1-14, 15-25, 26-38 d period (Figure 1).
- Between the two methionine sources, the final body weight numerically favored the PROXYMet™ groups over the MHA-FA groups, although no statistical difference was found (P>0.05; Figure 1).
- Overall, the results indicated no difference in growth performance between MHA-FA and PROXYMet™ (Table 1).
- Compared to MHA-FA, PROXYMet™ tended to improve the total eviscerated yield (P=0.07) and significantly increased breast muscle yield (P<0.05; Table 2).
- There were no significant interactions between methionine sources and inclusion levels (P>0.05; Tables 1 and 2).
- Statistically, the inclusion level of either product had impact neither on final body weight, feed intake and feed conversion ratio (Table 1) nor on carcass yield and breast meat yield (Table 2) suggesting that lowest inclusion level was sufficient for optimizing performance.
- Compared to MHA-FA, using PROXYMet™ to replace could save 5, 6 or 7 RMB per ton feed at the dosing level of 2.5, 3.0 or 3.5 kg, respectively (Table 3).
