Compensatory growth after under?nutrition in market Turkeys

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Abstract
Five levels of protein were fed from o to 6 weeks of age, resulting in groups of poults whose body weights at 6 weeks were depressed by 8, 25 and 50 per cent below maximum. After 6 weeks, all groups were fed adequate amounts of protein and the undernourished poults showed substantial compensatory growth. The treatment which resulted in a mean body weight 25 per cent below controls at 6 weeks gave only a 3 per cent reduction in live‐weight at 14 weeks of age. Undernourished poults ate more food at any given live‐weight between 6 and 14 weeks of age than did fully fed controls when they were at the same live‐weight. Food conversion was better in undernourished than in fully fed poults in the 6 to 14 week period even after a correction had been made for differences in the food required to maintain different body weights. Taking the whole period from o to 14 weeks, there was a small improvement in the efficiency of food conversion and a large increase in the efficiency of protein conversion to body weight in favour of the poults which had been undernourished to 6 weeks of age.

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