Pet-food manufacturers have specified to renderers the need for poultry by-product meal (PBM) to be manufactured without lower quality by-product fractions, such as feathers and heads, leading to a higher protein product than conventional feed-grade PBM. One result is that nutritionists are faced with greater nutrient variation among PBM sources. Thirty-six PBM samples (26 = feed grade and 10 = pet-food grade) were collected from commercial feed mills during a 3-mo period to assess nutrient composition and its variation. Pet-food-grade PBM had higher protein, less ash, and lower calcium than feed-grade PBM. Amino acid analyses indicated the pet-food-grade PBM had higher lysine and methionine, and the amino acids in pet-food-grade PBM exhibited higher digestibility compared with those in the feed-grade samples. Nutrient variability was more pronounced in the feed-grade PBM.
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Dozier et al. (2003) studied this question.