Vitamin E in Health and Disease of Poultry

Abstract

Vitamin E plays many roles essential to maintenance of health in poultry. The chick is an excellent experimental animal for study of vitamin E because this vitamin is concerned in the normal functioning of many different tissues in the chick and is required for prevention of a number of different deficiency diseases, the development of which depends upon the particular environmental and dietary conditions prevailing during the conduct, of the experiments. The studies with chicks show that in the nutrition of poultry in health arid disease vitamin E has a dual role, acting both as a nonspecific biological antioxidant, and also as a true vitamin in two or more apparently specific roles. Vitamin E has been shown over the past forty years to be important in the nutrition of poultry in health and disease, not only for normal reproduction but also (1) as nature's most effective antioxidant for prevention of encephalomalacia; (2) in a specific role, interrelated with the action of selenium, for prevention of exudative diathesis; and (3) in another role, interrelated with both selenium and cystine, for prevention of nutritional muscular dystrophy.