Factors Affecting the Metabolizable Energy Content of Poultry Feeds

SEVERAL procedures have been used to measure the metabolizable energy (M.E.) content of individual poultry feed ingredients. The most simple technique is to feed the test material alone and to determine its M.E. value directly. This procedure is open to the criticism that diets consisting of single feed ingredients are deficient in many nutrients hence their utilization may be abnormal (Baldini, 1960; Sibbald et al., 1960). Matterson et al. (1958) reported that corn fed alone had a lower M.E. value than when fed in combination with other ingredients. A second procedure is that proposed by Anderson et al. (1958). This technique involves the feeding of a control diet containing an ingredient of known M.E. content and a test diet similar to the control but in which a portion of the reference material is replaced with the ingredient to be assayed. The M.E. values of the two diets are determined and …