Determination of the nutritive value and protein digestibility of Artemia biomass using, biological and chemical methods and its utilization in broiler diet

Artemia or brine shrimp belong to crustacean subphylum and living in saline habitats. They exist in tropic and subtropic area in all ofthe world extensively.Iran has a good potenti l for breeding and development of this animal because it has salt desert, abundant salt pools and the biggest world salt lake (Urmia lake).- Today artemiacyst is a best and valuable food resources in larviculture and animal nutrition.Artemia biomass have a high nutritive value that can use it in aquaculture and animal nutrition. The Object of this research is to use a new ingredient with animal origin in poultry nutrition wruC'.h named "Artemia meal". For this study an experimeriment was conducted in five steps. In first step samples collected from three regions including: Urmia lake, earth ponds beside Urmia lake and Ghom salt lake and after drying and milling of these samples and one sample of fish meal they were analyzed for chemical composition.. In the second step, metabolizable energy of three kind of artemia and one sample of fish meal determined by sibbald method using adult young cockerels.In the third step, the apparent and true digestibility of these treatments were measured using in ,'ffro ileal digestibility technique where the samples obtained £i'om ileum after males broiler were sacrified .In the forth step under in vitro condition, protein digestibility of samples determined by pepsin method and active lysine assayed by dye binding method.In fifth step the effect of replacement of fish meal protein by different levels of artemia protein (Urmia lake artemia meal and earth ponds artemia meal) were estimated in broiler production. The results showed that nutritive value of this feedstuff (aremia meal) is variable and afL, ed by different kind of species, region and season of harvest and impurity of biomass . There were significant difference in metabolizable energy between the treatments (p 0.05).The highest value belong to fish 2852.4kcal/kg) and the lowest value depent to artemia meal (2298.5kcal/kg).The apparent and true digestibility of protein using ileum technique showed that there were significant difference between Urmia lake artemia meal the other treatments (P0.05).The highest percent of apparent and true protein digestibility belong to fish meal (88.02 %,92.12% respectively) and the lowest depent to Urmia lake artemia meal (82.96%,86.87% respectively).Pepsin digestibility test had a similar results with invivo method. In this experiment also there was significant difference between Urmia lake artemia meal with another treatments(P0.05).The highest digestibility percent relate to Urmia lake treatment (90.47%).For active lysine value there was no significant difference between the treatments. Anyway the highest value was belong to fish meal (36.68mmol/16gN) and the lowest value related to Ghom artemia treatment (21.65mmol/16gN).In the performance experiment, the effect of kind of artemia meal and the effect of level of protein replacement showed no significant difference in feed intake. But the interaction between kind of artemia and level of protein replacement was significant for this trait(p0.05).The highest feed intake belong to Urmia lake artemia treatment with 50% level of replacement and the lowest feed intake related to Urmia lake artemia treatment with %0 level of replacement.