A Comparison of Various Varieties of Sorghum as Substitute for Corn in Practical Chick Diets

SORGHUM grains have generally been assumed to be approximately equal to corn in nutritive value and could be equally substituted for corn. In animal diets, however, some recent experiments have shown that sorghum grains are not of equal nutritional value to corn, and that the nutritional values of the different varieties of sorghum grains varied among themselves. Adrian (1958) reported that all African cereals, including grain sorghum, were lysine deficient, and that sorghum grain had a protein digestibility 90% that of corn. Pond et al. (1958) found that protein of sorghum grains was inadequate in lysine and threonine. Vavich et al. (1959) reported that for the growing chick sorghum grains were limited in lysine and that sorghum grains containing high amounts of protein were more limited in this amino acid than sorghum grains containing relatively low amounts of protein. On the other hand, Ozment et al. (1963) reported that corn…