An experiment was carried out at Universidade Federal de Viçosa to determine the metabolizable energy values of different samples of feather meal and poultry by-product meal with different levels of inclusion and at different poultry ages. The ten treatments used to determine energy consisted of a reference diet and ten test diets, obtained with the replacement of reference diet by five levels (5, 10, 20, 30 and 40%) of feedstuffs. The metabolism trials (total fecal collection) were carried out in two periods (two poultry ages). The first period started when the chicks were 16 days old and the second one, with 30 days old. The feedstuffs energy values decreased as the inclusion level of test feed in the diet increased. The values of corrected apparent metabolizable energy of poultry offal meal mean were 3,442 and 3,209 kcal/kg and for feathers meal, 3,219 and 3,323 kcal/kg, when determined with chicks from 16 to 23 days and 30 to 38 days of age, respectively.
feather meal; metabolizable energy; methodologies; poultry; viscera meal
