Relative Effectiveness of Methionine Sources in Turkeys - Scientific and New Commercial Data

Introduction Knowing the relative nutritive value of liquid MHA-FA compared to DL-methionine (DL-Met) is an important precondition to cost-effective purchasing, feed formulation and animal production. Over the last few years there has been new and intriguing research published, mainly with broiler chickens, about the nutritional effectiveness of liquid MHA-FA relative to DLmethionine and the reasons for the difference (EsteveGarcia and Austic, 1993; Huyghebaert, 1993; Rostagno and Barbosa, 1995; Schutte and De Jong, 1996; Thomas et al., 1991; Van Weerden et al., 1992; Wallis et al., 1999; Lemme et al., 2002; Hoehler et al., 2003). bioefficacy of 71% (weight/weight) can be calculated for Consequently, a relative bioefficacy of 65% of liquid MHA-FA relative to DL-methionine on a weight basis (1 kg liquid MHA-FA to 0.65 kg of DL-Met) has found increasing acceptance among broiler nutritionists around the world. In contrast, scientific data in turkeys are rather scarce. In this paper, scientific and commercial data on relative effectiveness of methionine sources in turkeys will be presented and discussed. The first part of the data originated with Dr. Larry Potter and co-workers at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia in the 1980s and remained unpublished at that time (copies in Degussa Corporation files). The second part is a study conducted at the Akey Nutrition and Research Center in Lewisburg, Ohio in 2002 and the third part consists of four “commercial comparison” trials with DL-Met versus liquid MHA-FA in Minnesota and South Dakota from 2001 to 2003.