Abstract
Purified diets containing five graded levels of tryptophan were fed to growing chicks to evaluate tryptophan requirements for growth and maintenance. A model was developed to separate tryptophan requirement for maintenance from requirement for growth. From this model, the daily tryptophan requirement for growth was 2.16 mg/g gain, and the daily requirement for maintenance 0.029 times metabolic body size ($Wg^{0.75}$). Based on nitrogen gain response, the tryptophan requirement for growth was 0.078 mg/mg N gain, and the daily maintenance requirement was 0.029 times metabolic body size. The total tryptophan requirements were 71.56 mg/day or 0.173% of the diet, 69.48 mg/day or 0.168% of the diet based on the weight gain response and nitrogen gain response, respectively. Previous tryptophan requirements for growing chicks aging 1-28 days are in close agreement with these estimates. Based on the relationship of weight gain and N gain, about 1.25% of the retained CP was consisted of tryptophan; the previously reported value of tryptophan content of chick muscle CP was 1.03%.