Performance of broiler chicken in early life on methionine deficient feed with added choline and betaine

The experiment was designed and conducted to evaluate the availability of betaine (betaine anhydrous 97%) as methionine sparing for broilers. Two hundred and fifty day old chicks were randomly divided into five treatment groups which were divided into five replicates of ten chicks each. Primarily, a single starter ration deficient in methionine was formulated using NRC standards. The five treatment groups were; (A) Positive control supplemented with methionine, (B) Low Methionine (LM), (C) LM supplemented with choline at 0.17%, (D) LM supplemented with Betaine (0.14%) and (E) LM with Betaine at  0.07% in the starter ration. Choline was added at 700 mg/kg to Treatments A and B. Weight gain (WG), feed intake (FI) and feed conversion ratio (FCR) data was collected on a weekly basis from 0 to 28 days. Statistical analyses of data revealed significant differences among the treatment groups in FI, WG and FCR (P 0.05).   Key words: Betaine, broiler, choline, methionine, performance.