Early Growth Response of Broilers to Dietary Lysine at Fixed Ratio to Crude Protein and Essential Amino Acids (Report‪)‬

INTRODUCTION Commercial Poultry breeding programmes have been imposing high selection pressure for achieving rapid genetic gain per unit time at the earliest possible ages. Today, the broiler chickens weigh around 2.2 to 2.4 kg at 40 days of age. The magnitude of the growth indicates that each day in the life of broiler chicken is important to achieve the targeted body weight. Considering the high magnitude of growth, there has been considerable research directing towards defining the minimum intake of dietary protein (CP) and amino acids (AA) to reduce the nitrogen in the excreta , thus reducing the nitrogen loss to the environment (Aletor et al., 2000; Plumstead et al., 2007; Waguespack et al., 2009). Nevertheless, difference have existed in the literature with regard to the estimated minimum lysine (Lys) requirement of broilers and this has been attributed to the broiler strain (Kid et al., 2005), proportion of breast meat accretion (Bilgili et al., 1992), environmental factors (Kidd and Fracncher, 2001) and the method of determination of requirement (Plumstead et al., 2007).