Toxicity of linseed meal for chicks

OEVERAL investigators have shown ^ that linseed meal gave poor growth when substituted for other protein supple-ments in chick starting diets. Heuser, Norris and McGinnis (1946) showed that as little as fifteen percent of linseed meal in the diet caused poor growth in White Leghorn chicks. McGinnis and Polis (1946) tried several methods of treating linseed meal to improve its nutritive value for growing chicks. They found that a marked improvement resulted when the linseed meal was water-treated. This treatment consisted of wetting the linseed meal with approximately two times its weight of water and al-lowing the mixture to stand for 18 hours at 37°C. The linseed meal treated in this manner gave a greatly increased growth response with chicks when compared with untreated linseed meal when each kind of linseed meal was included in the diet as the only source of supplementary protein. In the first series of experiments, McGinnis and Polis (1946) added the treated linseed meal to the diet in the moist state. In later experi-ments it was dried before mixing in the diet. More recently, Kratzer (1946, 1947) showed that "water treatment " in which a 1:3 linseed meal-tap water mixture was a allowed to stand at 22°C. for 12 hours (with subsequent drying before incorpo-ration into the diet) gave as good growt