African Journal of
Agricultural Research

  • Abbreviation: Afr. J. Agric. Res.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN: 1991-637X
  • DOI: 10.5897/AJAR
  • Start Year: 2006
  • Published Articles: 6894

Full Length Research Paper

Levels of the amino-acid lysine in rations for broilers

Aurélio Ferreira Borges
  • Aurélio Ferreira Borges
  • Federal Institute of Education Science and Technology in Rondonia State, Brazil.
  • Google Scholar


  •  Received: 15 February 2017
  •  Accepted: 19 June 2017
  •  Published: 13 July 2017

Abstract

Synthetic amino acid supplementation has provided facilities in the adjustment of feed formula, making it possible to obtain the required levels of essential amino acids. Lysine is pronounced the second greatest restrictive amino acid in broiler nutrition. The synthetic amino acid lysine is used as the orientation amino acid in poultry for the reason that it is mainly consumed for protein synthesis. In order to characterize the requirements of lysine, 240 male broilers of the lineage Avian Farms were kept in an environment with average temperature of 25.6°C. The 22 to 42 days old broilers presented initial average weight of 541 ± 3.6 g. The basal ration contained 19.57% of crude protein (CP), 3100 kcal of metabolizable energy (ME)/kg and 0.88% of total lysine, which was supplemented with 0.000, 0.076, 0.153, 0.230 and 0.306% de L-lysine hydrochloric acid (HCL), resulting in rations with 0.88, 0.94, 1.00, 1.06 and 1.12% of total lysine. The experimental design was completely randomized with five treatments of total lysine, six repetitions and eight broilers per repetition. During experiments, the temperature was kept at 25.6 ± 0.24°C, relative moisture ate 68.4 ± 6.30%, black globe temperature at 25.7 ± 0.25°C and the wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT) at 74  ±  0.6°C. Treatments influenced the absolute weight of carcass, breast with bone, leg, thigh, abdominal fat and relative weight of breast with bone. Lysine levels had a quadratic effect over the food conversion (FC), which increased up to the level 1.03% of total lysine. Lysine levels had a quadratic influence over the weight gain (WG), which increased up to the level 1.05% of total lysine.

Key words: Chickens for meat production, growth phase, lysine, thermal environment.