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Antioxidants and other Additives for Improving Alaska Fish Waste for Mink Feed

U. S. Department of Agriculture^,4

Abstract

One-hundred-twenty-eight female minks were equalized into 16 outcome groups and then randomly assigned to eight treatment lots. The treatments were designed especially to test the effectiveness of the antioxidants (BHT) butylated hydroxy toluene, (THBP) 2,4,5-tryhydroxy butyrophenone and (Santoquin) dihydroethoxy trimethylquinoline in controlling steatitis in minks fed diets containing high levels of fish waste, sea mammal meat and other additives.

The female minks were fed through the breeding, gestation and suckling periods and some of their kits, 21 males and 20 females from each lot, were continued on the diets until pelting. Production in all of the treatment lots was excellent except in one lot containing added wheat germ and brewers yeast and this difference was not statistically significant. Carcass examination at pelting showed that 92% of the animals unprotected by the antioxidants showed evidence of steatitis; whereas, there was none of the disease present in animals receiving the antioxidants.

Statistical analysis of the data was used to study treatment effects on various traits measured by the experiments. Significant treatment differences in the number of kits weaned were not found, but weaning weights of the kits, post-weaning growth of kits, and pelt quality all showed significant treatment differences (P<.05). There was some indication that the antioxidants caused improvement in these latter traits. Lot 2, receiving BHT, ranked better in all of the four traits studied than Lot 1, the control group. All of the lots that showed favorable significant differences were from among those that had received one of the antioxidants.

¹ Experimental Fur Station, Petersburg, Alaska.

² Sheep and Fur Animal Research Branch, Animal Husbandry Research Division, ARS, Beltsville, Maryland.

³ Present address: Department of Mathematics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts.

⁴ In cooperation with the Alaska Experiment Stations and the University of Alaska.