Summary

The underlying premise of this proposal is that the roles of BCAA in chicken-meat production merit further research. There is the implication that broiler chickens may benefit from higher dietary leucine inclusions but this may also necessitate higher inclusions of isoleucine and valine to counter antagonistic interactions between BCAA. However, these issues can only assume more importance given the quest to develop reduced-CP diets where birds are likely to be far more vulnerable to subtle changes in dietary amino acid profiles.

Program

Chicken Meat

Research Organisation

The University of Sydney

Objective Summary

The fundamental objective is to generate a better comprehension of the role of BCAA in reduced-CP diets, to elucidate the established antagonisms across BCAA and their interaction with starch and protein digestive dynamics. More specifically, the intention is to identify the optimal BCAA inclusion levels in reduced-CP diets using the Box-Behnken design, which is very well suited to meet this purpose. Given that this goal is achieved, the final objective is to validate the identified BCAA inclusion levels in a 42-day feeding study in straight–run broiler chickens housed on litter in floor pens.