Abstract
A feeding trial was carried out with a light commercial laying strain (Thornber 606) to study the ability of a diet based on grain sorghum, cottonseed meal, sesame meal and meat meal to support satisfactory egg production. Nitrogen retention and digestibility tests were performed on the same diet and available lysine and available methionine were determined on samples of the meat meal used. It was found that the diet containing these ingredients alone did not support satisfactory egg production in spite of its apparent adequacy in protein and essential amino acids. Supplementation of this diet with synthetic L-lysine plus DL-methionine or with L-glutamic acid sodium salt significantly improved egg production, liveweight gain and feed conversion efficiency. A large proportion of the calculated amounts of lysine and methionine contributed to the basal diet by meat meal was not available to the birds.
