The Incidence of Foot-Pad Dermatitis in Young Turkeys Fed High Levels of Soybean Meal

Abstract

INTRODUCTIONConsiderable research effort has been directed toward the turkey leg weakness and foot-pad dermatitis problem in the last two years.Patrick et al. (1942) were the first to report that a biotin deficiency in chicks and poults resulted in perosis and foot-pad dermatitis.Interest in these problems increased greatly when poults on commercial farms were observed to have typical biotin deficiency symptoms (Richardson and Wilgus, 1967; Johnson, 1967).Jensen (1969) reported a foot-pad dermatitis in turkey poults which was not related to a simple biotin deficiency. This foot-pad dermatitis was reported to be related to factors in the feces from birds fed diets containing a high level of soybean meal. It was reported that poults fed diets containing 40% or more of soybean meal exhibited a high incidence of foot-pad dermatitis, while birds fed diets containing little or no soybean meal had little or no such dermatitis. The purpose…