Chemical composition and metabolizable energy values of feathers meal and poultry by-product meal determined by different methodologies for chickens

A serie of experiments was carried out with the objective to determine the nutritive value of nine poultry by-product meal and six feather meal for chickens. Four different methodologies were used to determine the values of N corrected apparent (AMEn) and true corrected (TMEn) metabolizable energy, where the traditional method was used with chicks and cocks and the Sibbald method was used with roosters and cecectomized cocks. The estimated AMEn and TMEn values of viscera meal ranged from 3,051 to 3,621 and from 2,866 to 3,583 kcal/kg, respectively. Feathers meal values ranged from 2,952 to 3,629 and from 2,703 to 3,671 kcal/kg for AMEn and TMEn, respectively. Among the methodologies to determine the feeds energy, the correlations were low, so the differences on the feeds energy values were due to the methodology used.