Soft Phosphate in Chick Rations

SINCE excellent reviews concerning phosphorus in chick rations have recently been presented (Almquist, 1954; Motzok et al., 1956), mention will be made only of publications which are directly related to the subject of this paper. Gerry et al. (1947) found that 2.5 percent soft phosphate with colloidal clay produced satisfactory calcification in young chicks, but the growth rate of these chicks was lower than with groups fed equivalent amounts of bone meal. Miller and Joukovsky (1953) reported that the phosphorus from dicalcium phosphate, Curacao Island phosphate, bone meal, and defluorinated phosphate were good sources of readily available inorganic phosphate. Soft phosphate was a poor source of available phosphorus for growing chicks and seemed to have less than 50 percent of the value of the other supplements. Experiments by Johnson et al. (1953) indicated that soft phosphate could be used to supply part of the phosphorus needs of young chicks. They …