The primary objective of this study was to examine the potential impact of incorporating a specific emulsifier (de-oiled soybean lecithin; DSL), into a low metabolizable energy (ME) diet on the bone quality of growing turkeys. A total of 480 newly hatched turkeys were divided into four dietary treatments, with each treatment having 8 replicates of 15 birds each. Experimental treatments included: BE (basal diet; commercially recommended levels of ME), RE (reduced energy diet; 100 Kcal/kg reduction in dietary ME content), DSL-1 (RE + 1 g/kg DSL), and DSL-2 (RE + 2 g/kg DSL). The study found that after 112 days, turkeys fed with any of the diets showed improvements in tibia length, weight, ash percentage, and phosphorous content compared to those fed diet RE (P < 0.05), with turkeys fed with diet DSL-2 showing the highest tibia ash content. The addition of a 2 g/kg DSL supplement increased (P < 0.05) calcium deposition in the tibia compared to diets without the supplement (RE and BE diets). Overall, the present findings suggest that while low-ME diets impair bone quality parameters in turkeys, dietary supplementation with DSL could remove the probable unfavorable impacts of these diets. In addition, the diet supplemented with DSL at a level of 2 g/kg was found to be more beneficial than both the BE and RE diets in terms of bone ash and calcium deposition.
