TRANSPORT MECHANISM OF PLASMA IRON IN HENS AND PIGEONS

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the transport mechanism of plasma iron in hens and pigeons. The need of iron for the egg formation increases in the laying bird and for this reason, a high activation in the iron metabolism is produced. The phosphoprotein phosphorus is determined by using the Allen technique. The values of plasma iron are higher than the total iron-binding capacity in laying hens and laying ducks. The chapter describes a quantitative evolution of iron-binding proteins, transferrin, and phosvitin in physiological conditions in hens and pharmacological effects of estrogens on pigeons. In both birds, hens and pigeons, the relationship between transferrin and nontrasferrin iron separated by the magnesium carbonate are also obtained with Sephadex G-200. The phosphoprotein increases parallely to the nontransferrin iron after the laying bird or accion estrogens started. The transferrin also increases with the egg production. When the egg production reaches 40%, the plasma iron content exceeds the total iron binding capacity of the transferring.