Abstract
The effects of dietary supplementation of feather meal digests(FM) and its digests on the growth of broiler chicks and taurine content in the broiler meat were examined. Total of 100 broiler chickens were assigned to five dietary treatments: T1； Control, T2； feather meal(FM) 5 ％ diet, T3； NaOH treated FM 5％ diet, T4； HNO$_3$treated FM 5 ％ diet and T5； synthetic taurine 0.5 % supplemented diet. Taurine content of leg muscle was significantly(P＜0.01) increased by treatments. The highest increase over the control was shown by 0.5 ％ taurine diet(170 ％), followed by FM diet(123 ％), NaOH treated FM diet(122 ％) and HNO$_3$treated FM diet(63 ％). Taurine content of breast muscle was increased by 246 ％ in 0.5 ％ taurine diet but FM diets were not significantly different from the control. Taurine content of heart muscle was not significantly affected by dietary treatments. There were big differences in the average taurine content of the parts or organ of the control birds; 778 $\mu\textrm{g}$/g leg muscle, 79 $\mu\textrm{g}$/g breast muscle and 1482 $\mu\textrm{g}$/g heart muscle. It was concluded that taurine content of leg muscle of broiler can be increased by supplementation of feather meal. Alkaline or acid treatment FM was not effective in improving taurine enrichment of the broiler meat.