Modeling Amino Acid Requirements for Turkeys

Feed costs are the major cost of live turkey production. With recent use of grain and oilseeds for bio-energy production and increased need for feed worldwide, we have seen significant cost increases for feed ingredients and thus to the overall cost of turkey feed. While initially this was thought to be a market swing, it now appears that higher input costs are the norm and thus efforts to reduce feed costs are needed. The potential of modeling has not been fully realized especially in the turkey. While models are in use in the broiler and pig industries, models for turkeys have been primarily of academic interest and used merely to describe the growth of the turkey. While this has some value as a starting point, it has little value in terms of economic significance. In previous trials with turkeys, we have utilized the Ideal Protein Concept, the main goal of which is to provide a combination of essential amino acids that precisely meet an animal’s requirement for protein accretion and maintenance while avoiding deficiencies and excesses. Each indispensible amino acid is expressed as an ideal ratio, or percentage, of lysine. In past research in our laboratory, we have seen similar performance from birds fed diets formulated to those fed standard, industry-type diets, and our ideal protein research has been shown to reduce cost as much as 8%. The goal of the current trial was to attempt a more novel approach to reducing feed costs utilizing both the Ideal Protein Concept and modeling.