Blood Spot Incidence in Chicken Eggs and Vitamin A Level of the Diet

THE occurrence of blood spots in eggs of the domestic fowl has been considered generally to be caused by genetic and environmental factors. A suggestion that diet might be associated with the incidence of blood spots in chicken eggs was noted at this Station (Bearse and Miller, 1940) when in experiments on vitamin A requirements of laying hens, diets with a low level of this vitamin produced eggs with numerous small blood spots. The occurrence of increased blood spots was attributed to a possible vitamin K deficiency because of low levels of alfalfa in the rations fed. Many nutritional factors have been studied to determine their effect on production of blood spots in eggs [Nalbandov and Card, 1944, 1947; Denton, 1947; Carver and Henderson, 1948; Sauter et al., 1952]. While some of these investigations showed a beneficial effect from grass range, dried cereal grass, and fresh cut and dehydrated alfalfa, …