The Vitamin Requirements of Growing Chickens

Abstract

With several fairly recent demonstrations that the chicken can be raised successfully under laboratory conditions, and that its food requirements can be covered by the synthetic rations (composed largely of purified nutrients) that have heretofore been used only with rats and mice, the popularity and usefulness of this animal as an experimental subject is undoubtedly increasing. In laboratories primarily interested in the nutrition of farm animals, the chicken may be used, not only in the solution of general problems in nutrition, but also of problems in practical poultry husbandry. If the experimental work in such laboratories is to be the most widely appreciated, it is undoubtedly of great advantage to work with animals of economic importance on the farm. The chicken possesses many of the advantages of the rat as an experimental animal, in size, food consumption, rapidity of growth, etc., but it must be constantly borne in mind that .