author(s)
D Desinguraja, K Shyama and Ally K

abstract
A trial was conducted to study the effect of dietary supplementation of betaine hydrochloride (betaine HCl) on growth and nutrient utilization in broiler chicken. The study was carried out for a period of six weeks in Vencobb 400 broiler chicks. One hundred – and – ninety two, day-old commercial broiler chicks were allotted to four groups, with four replications of 12 chicks each, randomly. The four groups were allotted to four dietary regimes and each replicate was randomly assigned to one of the four dietary treatments in this study. The experimental feed was formulated according to BIS (1992) ^[4] specifications and to the control ration (T₁), feed grade betaine HCl at 250, 500, 750 ppm was added respectively to form different rations T_2, T₃ and T₄ for different treatment groups. The birds in each group were maintained on their respective ration throughout the experimental period of six weeks. The proximate composition of breast muscle did not show any significant difference between groups except in the case of crude protein (P<0.01). The tibial bone analysis results indicated that the defatted bone weight, tibial bone ash, bone calcium and phosphorus levels were not influenced with different levels of betaine HCl supplementation.