Producers are finding unique ways to turn turkey litter into a benefit instead of a cost. One approach is to use starved air low temperature gasification to create energy while providing an ash that could be used as a mineral source in turkey diets. The hypothesis of this study is gasification will result in minimal calcium and phosphorus availability due to non-specific binding to other minerals. The aim of the studies is to evaluate calcium and phosphorus bioavailability from turkey litter ash and the effect on the growth performance of turkeys. Two separate experiments, each with seven diets, were conducted. The concentrations of the diets ranged from 9.2 to 12.9 g/kg (calcium diets) and 7.4 to 12.4 g/kg (phosphorus diets). Each experiment had six replicates per treatment with eight birds per pen from 7 to 28 days of age. In the first experiment, no significant differences were found in production parameters or bone measurements. However, significant differences were found in ileal calcium digestibility between the lowest and highest concentrations of limestone and litter ash. The results suggest that using approximately 11 g/kg calcium from turkey litter ash in the diet is comparable to a standard limestone diet. Phosphorus source in the second experiment had an effect on the body weight gain, feed intake, and bone parameters. The ileal phosphorus digestibility was significantly different between the litter ash and monosodium phosphate diets. The data indicated that using 8.4 g/kg phosphorus from the litter ash in the diet resulted in performance similar to the monosodium phosphate diet. Therefore, litter ash can be substituted into turkey starter diets for the first 28 days of production with no significant impact on production parameters.
Read
