Production of Depleted Chicks by Feeding Maternal Diets Deficient in Unidentified Growth Factors

Abstract

MANY investigators have demonstrated that the nutritional wellbeing of a newly-hatched chick depends to a considerable extent upon the nourishment of its dam (Bird et al., 1946; Csonka and Olsen, 1949; Hill et al., 1954; and others). Vitamin B12, for instance, is stored in the body of the chick and tenaciously held (Jackson et al., 1953). Study of this vitamin, therefore, is facilitated by the use of a deficient maternal diet.In considering the well-known, but usually unpublished, difficulties in studying unidentified chick growth factors, it seemed likely that one of these is due to the presence of large reserves of these factors in the tissues of newly-hatched chicks of normally fed dams. Menge et al. (1952) and Patterson and McGinnis (1954) obtained evidence that the chick’s growth response to certain supplements containing unidentified factors is decreased by the presence of the supplements in the maternal diet. Conversely, Fisher et al. …