A Note on the Estimation of the Uric Acid Radical in Avian Excreta

Abstract

EXPERIMENTS carried out on digestibility trials with poultry are complicated by the fact that the dung and urine are voided together and cannot be conveniently separated by mechanical means. It is the general practice to calculate the amounts of urinary substances present in the mixed excreta by estimating the uric acid and ammonia and then applying certain factors. The estimation of uric acid in avian excreta has engaged the attention of a number of workers in the field of poultry nutrition, and of the more recent methods evolved are those described by Hutchinson (1941), Bose (1944) and Bose and Ghosh (1945). Hutchinson extracted the dry faeces with hot lithium carbonate solution, placing over a water bath for fifteen minutes, and precipitated the uric acid from the filtered extract by means of the Benedict and Hitchcock (1915) ammoniacal silver magnesium precipitant. He decomposed the precipitate with a weak hydrochloric acid solution . . .