Calcium and Phosphorus Requirements of Poults Fed Purified Diets

THE phosphorus and calcium requirements for growing turkey poults have been studied by a number of investigators. A portion of the experimental data which has been published is presented in Table 1 to facilitate comparison. Attention is directed to the varying levels of protein that were fed, the levels of vitamin D supplied, the breeds of poults used, and the difference, for some authors, between the experimental findings and the recommendations made. Several papers are based on a single experiment, and only one of the investigators indicated that any allowance had been made with respect to the sex of the poults used. All of the work reviewed here made use of diets which had cereal grains as a major component; hence, the diets contained varying amounts of phytin phosphorus. This has made the estimation of the absolute poult requirement for phosphorus difficult because of the low availability of phytin phosphorus… .