Effects of dry dietary protein on digestibility, nitrogen-balance and growth performance of young male mink

• Published in: Animal Nutrition 2015-06, Vol.1 (2), p.60-64
• Main Authors: Zhang, Tietao, Zhang, Haihua, Wu, Xuezhuang, Guo, Qiang, Liu, Zhi, Qian, Wang, Gao, Xiuhua, Yang, Fuhe, Li, Guangyu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Digestibility; Growth performance; Mink; Protein; Special Economic Animal Nutrition
• ISSN: 2405-6545; 2405-6383
• DOI: 10.1016/j.aninu.2015.05.001

The experiment was to study the nutrient digestibility and metabolism performance of male minks, which were fed different protein level diets during growth period. Effects of protein quantity on growth and development of minks and feed conversion ratio (FCR) were also investigated. Sixty healthy male minks of 45 d were randomly allocated into six groups with ten replicates, which was one sable for each replicate. The minks in six groups were fed diets in which protein levels were 28, 30, 32, 34, 36 and 38%, respectively. The six groups were denoted as P28, P30, P32, P34, P36 and P38. After 2 wk, all minks were weighed, average daily gains (ADG) were calculated, and the digestibility values of nutrients were determined. The results indicated that digestibility of calcium, nitrogen of fence, nitrogen deposition, net protein utilization (NPU), and biological value of protein (BV) were similar (  > 0.05), however, nitrogen intake greatly varied among groups (