Application to the Fowl of the Antipyrine Dilution Technique for the Estimation of Body Composition

THE desirability of relating many physiological, nutritional and metabolic observations on animals to lean body mass or fat-free body weight rather than total body weight has been set forth by many workers (see, for example, Pace and Rathbun, 1945; Edelman et al., 1952; Behnke, 1953; Reid et al, 1955; Zak and Earle, 1957). With the advent of simplified dilution techniques (Soberman et al., 1949) in vivo estimation of body composition has become more common place, including studies on several domesticated mammalian species: cattle (Kraybill et al., 1951); dogs (Herrold and Sapirstein, 1952); swine (Kraybill et al., 1953); and sheep (Hansard and Luke, 1956). In the case of cattle and swine, their application to nutrition studies has more recently received attention (Clawson et al., 1955; McFadden and Richards, 1956; Wellington et al., 1956). This paper considers the application of the antipyrine dilution technique to the hen, with observations on the changes . . .