Utilization of Urea Nitrogen by Growing Chicks

EXPERIMENTS both in the United States and in Europe have shown that ruminants can utilize simple nitrogenous compounds as protein supplements. Armsby (1911), in his extensive review on the German experiments, and Mitchell (1929) present evidence to show that carnivora and omnivora cannot utilize compounds such as urea and ammonium salts. Kriss and Marcy (1940) recently reported that rats do not utilize urea. Piepenbrock (1927) reported having fed urea to pigs without deleterious effects, but gains in weight were not significantly different for any of the groups. Moore, Lavietes, Wakeman, and Peters (1931) reported experiments on feeding urea to three normal men.Contrary to most of the results obtained with nonruminants, their work indicated that some nitrogen was stored. Carstens and Prüfer (1938) concluded that the urea was not utilized by laying hens. Information relative to the value of urea in chick rations was lacking at the time the experiment reported . . .