Observation on Lipid Utilization in Hens Fed Vegetable and Animal Fat Supplemented Diets

THE recent advent of the synthetic detergent industry has created a surplus of inedible animal fats making them, thereby, available to the feed industry at a cost permitting their competition with carbohydrate energy sources (Ewell, 1953; and Krieg, 1954). The addition of these fats to feeds, however, has been made without serious consideration of the biochemical and physiological changes they might induce. Human studies indicate that an abnormal lipid metabolism may be induced by a large intake of saturated fat, (Ahrens et al., 1954, 1957; and Beveridge, 1956) whereas no such effects occurred when unsaturated fat was consumed. Similar observations in the mature chicken upon feeding saturated animal fat have been reported by Weiss and Fisher (1957) and Price et al. (1957). Although the effect of feeding an unsaturated fat to hens has been studied by several workers in connection with studies not related to the present problem (Heywang, 1943; . . .