THE EFFECTS OF DIETARY VALINE ON PERFORMANCE, SERUM ANTIBODY TITRE AND BONE MINERALIZATION IN BROILER CHICKS

The present study was carried out to examine the effect of supplemental dietary valine in the starter diet of broilers (0-15 d of age) on performance, antibody response to Newcastle disease virus vaccination and bone mineralization. The experiment was conducted using 300 Ross 308 male broilers. One-day-old chicks were rando mly allotted to 3 groups; each group consisted of 5 replicate pens with 20 birds per pen. Chickens were fed one of three dietary treatments with varying concentrations of valine; the first diet was adequate in valine (0% valine), the second and third diets had an excess in valine (0.08% and 0.16% synthetic valine in diet) because valine was added in place of inert filler. The results showed that supplemental dietary valine did not alter either feed intake, body weight gain or feed conversion ratio. Hemagglutination Inhibition titre was significantly increased when valine was added to the diet (P<0.05). The supplemental dietary valine had a signific ant effect on the calcium concentration in bone (P<0.05), but there was no significant effect on the phosphorus concentration in bone.