A. Zarei

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter http://dx. doi. org/10.5772/53610

1. Introduction

In the nutritional behavior of single stomach animals, the origin of protein is important and its quality varies between different sources and animal origin is better than plant origin [7]. From the standpoint of salmonella contamination and due to high microbial potential, however, some of these proteins such as meat and bone meal ought to be used with caution. If heat treatment is not enough during fish meal processing, thiaminase will remain in fish meal and will cause harmful effects. Some researches indicated that thiamin will be reduced by thiaminase under special storage condition of ingredient before feeding animal [6,7] . Also, severe heating during meat and bone meal and fish meal processing to be confident that poultry by-product is safe, however some amino acids will probably degenerate and their bioavailability will decrease [5,7, 8,9] .

Although, meat & bone and fish meal have been used in poultry feeding, exclusively, but artemia biomass is also one of the animal proteins with high nutritional value which can be used in aquaculture and animal nutrition [1,4] .

The aim of this study is a survey of biology and characteristics of artemia and possibility of its usage in poultry nutrition as a protein source.