Dietary threonine levels: effect on growth performance and gut organ measurements of indigenous Boschveld chickens.

The study was done to determine the effect of various threonine inclusion levels in the diets on the growth performance and gut organ measurements of indigenous Boschveld chickens aged 49 days. A total of 200-day-old chicks, weighing 30 ± 5 g per bird, were randomly allocated to five dietary treatment levels in a completely randomized design, replicated four times with 10 chicks per replicate. Growth performance and gut organ measurements data were analysed using Statistical Analysis System (SAS) version 9.4 and subjected to Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Threonine inclusion levels (4, 7.5, 8, 8.5, and 9 g/kg DM) had an effect (p < 0.05) on feed intakes, body weight gains, feed conversion ratios, duodenum pH, GIT, ileum jejunum, duodenum, large intestine lengths, crop, gizzard, ileum jejunum, duodenum, and caeca weights of the birds. Threonine inclusion levels had no effect (p > 0.05) on crop, gizzard, ileum, jejunum, caeca, large intestine pH values, and caeca lengths of the birds. Duodenum weights of the birds were optimized at a dietary threonine level of 8.00 g/kg. In conclusion, variables measured were optimized at different dietary threonine levels. This has implications for diet formulation for the chickens. Thus, there is a need for further studies on the subject to ascertain the present findings.