Scad Ii

Guanidino acetic acid (GAA) is naturally occurring in animal tissues playing a major role in the energy metabolism as a precursor of creatine. The objective of the study was to examine potential effects of GAA (CreAMINOTM) supplementation in purely vegetable diets compared to a positive control. Therefore a total of 780 male ROSS 308 broiler chickens were assigned to one of the following three diets: positive control (6% meat and bone meal), negative control (vegetable diet) and a vegetable diet supplemented with 0.6 g CreAMINOTM/ kg feed. Performance parameters were recorded from day 14 to day 35 and at the end of the experiment 5 chickens per pen (26 pens) were utilized for carcass quality determination in terms of carcass percentage, breast yield, leg yield, wing yield and abdominal fat yield. Additionally, meat quality in breast meat samples including pH, color, drip loss was measured. Overall weight gain of the broilers did not differ between positive control and the CreAMINOTM supplemented diet while broilers fed the purely vegetable diet showed significantly lower weight gain (p<0.05). Feed conversion was significantly lower in the treatment with CreAMINOTM supplementation compared to both positive and negative control (p<0.05), while mortality remained unaffected by treatment. Only numeric differences between treatments for carcass quality could be determined. Furthermore pH, drip loss, tenderness evaluation and lightness (L*), yellowness (b*) did not show any effect, only redness (a*) was found to be lower in the CreAMINOTM treatment. It can be concluded that supplementation of CreAMINOTM in purely vegetable diets improves broiler performance to levels achieved with a diet containing meat and bone meal, while carcass and product quality are not affected by supplemental CreAMINOTM.