Chromium-51 in Food Metabolizability and Passage Rate Studies with the Ring-necked Pheasant ,

Abstract

INTRODUCTION MANY labels have been tested as indicator substances (Browne, 1922; Bergeim, 1926; Hoelzel, 1930; Henry et al., 1933; Forbes and Garrigus, 1948; Reid et al., 1952; Imabayashi et al., 1956; Mueller, 1956; Hollis and Thompson, 1958; and Tuckey et al., 1958). But the most widely used marker is chromic oxide which was first suggested by Edin (1918) for use in digestion trials. It has since been used in nutritional studies of pigs (Moore, 1957), man (Irwin and Crampton, 1951), cattle (Smith and Reid, 1955), sheep (Johnson et al., 1964), Japanese quail (McFarland and Freedland, 1965), and poultry (Hill and Renner, 1963). Recently, however, radioactive chromium (51-Cr) has been found by several investigators to be useful for digestive studies with mammals. Alternative methods for energy metabolism studies do not use inert food markers. The total collection technique for determining the metabolizability coefficient of a diet can be employed (Kendeigh, 1949; . . .