Nutritional Feasibility of L-Valine Inclusion in Commercial Broiler Diets

Introduction The poultry industry has recently dealt with fluctuating spikes in the price of various feed ingredients. When the cost of protein-rich feed ingredients goes up, the reduction of dietary crude protein via the use of commercially available amino acids becomes an effective formulation strategy that can reduce diet costs, maintain broiler performance and not interfere with feed milling throughput. These points have been supported with the increased adoption of LThreonine during the past several years. Studies with broilers have shown that in all vegetable diets [1-3] and in those containing animal byproducts [4-5], Val is likely the 4 limiting amino acid]. Until now, all the nutritional needs of Val in poultry have been covered by the contribution of protein-bound Val in major protein ingredients. The recent availability of commercially available L-Valine (L-Val) has the potential of changing this scenario.