Thiamine Deficiency Identification and Treatment in Commercial Turkeys and Coturnix Quail1

ABSTRACT Day-old turkey poults were obtained from a commercial hatchery which hatched eggs from a particular flock of breeders that produced a considerable num-ber (5-10%) of culls. These cull poults showed symptoms almost classical for polyneuritis. Injection of the poults with a combination vitamin mixture containing thiamine, or of thiamine alone, caused decreased mortality and a remission of symptoms. Poults injected with thiamine grew and developed normally when fed a practical type diet. The addition of 2 mg./kg. of thiamine to the breeder ration caused the condition to disappear in newly-hatched poults from the particular flock involved. Classical symptoms of polyneuritis were noted in newly-hatched quail from breeding flocks fed turkey breeder rations. These quail responded positively to thiamine injection. POULTKY SCIENCE 51: 419-423, 1972 THE thiamine requirement for maxi-mum hatchability in chickens has been reported by Polin et al. (1963). These workers reported that a minimum yolk level of 0.63 p.p.m. of thiamine was neces-sary for maximum hatchability. Their data indicated that a normal dietary level of 0.68 p.p.m. would produce this level of thi-amine in the yolk. Sullivan et al. (1967) and Robenalt, (1960), reported the thia-mine requirement of young turkey poults to be between 1.2 and 2 p.p.m. Armintrout et al. (1964), suggested that the require-ment for thiamine by the young turkey in-creases with age. Little is known of the fre-quency of thiamine deficiency among com-mercial turkey flocks. The natural abun-dance of thiamine in feed ingredients sug-gests that the condition is rare. However, borderline cases may occasionally go unrec-ognized. The present studies were initiated to in-vestigate a field problem apparently related to thiamine deficiency in newly-hatched tur-key poults and a polyneuritis condition ob-served in Coturnix quail. Symptoms typica