Role of diet on odour emissions from meat chickens

Abatement of odour emissions has become an important consideration to agricultural industries, including poultry production. In order to study the link between diet and odour emissions, an experiment was conducted using twelve Ross 308 broiler chickens. At the age of 22 days, birds of uniform body weight were selected from a total of 288 male birds, adapted to metabolic chambers for six days and fed their respective diets for 15 days. Two treatments were compared using three replicates of two birds per chamber. The two wheat-soy diets were formulated according to the 2007 Ross 308 nutrient specifications for digestible amino acids but they differed in ingredient composition and metabolisable energy content. Thus, Diet A had 13.39 MJ/kg ME and used 60g/kg canola but no corn whereas Diet B contained 12.90 MJ/kg ME and used 150g/kg corn but no canola. The odorous emissions were measured using a Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. A total of 24 volatile organic compounds were detected and quantified; eight being the major odorous ones: 2,3-butanedione, 2-butanone, dimethyldisulfide, methylmercaptan, 2-butanol, 3-methyl-butanal, phenol and m-cresol. From this pilot study it appears that there is a strong link between diet and odour emissions from broiler chickens.