Plane of nutrition and starch equivalents

Experiments with two sheep are described in which energy retention was measured at different levels of food intake and the losses of energy incidental to food consumption measured. 2. Attainment of reasonably stable values for energy losses occurred after 72 hr. of fast. On realimentation stable values were not attained until 10 days had elapsed. Methane production was resumed relatively slowly. 3. The accuracy of the mean estimates of energy retention was high, and duplicate determinations of metabolism after lapses of time gave excellent agreement. 4. It is shown that the assumption of linearity of the relationship between energy retention and food intake expressed as metabolizable energy is incorrect. 5. An exponential relationship between energy retention, and food intake was employed to describe the data. This resulted in a reduction of the residual sum of squares compared with a linear regression. 6. It is shown that net energy values (starch equivalents) measured by Kellner, Armsby and Forbes have entirely different meanings, and that the correction employed by Wood reflects these facts. 7. The exponential relationship has been generalized to take into account body-size variation and has been examined as far as it affects concepts of efficiency of food utilization, and of nutritional plane. 8. Nutritional plane has been rigidly defined in such a way that it is independent of body size and of food quality, and it enables net energy values to be predicted at other planes of nutrition once the net energy value at one nutritional plane is known. 9. A simple and rational scheme for the feeding of livestock to take into account the decline in net energy value (starch equivalent) with nutritional plane has been devised. 10. Analysis of the energy losses in relation to nutritional plane shows that losses of energy in faeces, urine and as heat per unit food ingested tend to rise with increasing nutritional plane. Methane losses fall. These results suggest that the prediction of net energy values from measurement of energy losses in faeces, or from estimates of metabolizable energy, can give rise to extremely unreliable results. 11. The results have been discussed in relation to previous work in this field. It is pointed out that the exponential relationships employed are a convenient method of describing a very complex situation and facilitating its analysis.