Protein Reserves and Survival of Cocks on a Protein-Free Diet

EVIDENCE for the usefulness of protein reserves in growing chickens during disease stress and during stress imposed by protein-imbalanced diets has been presented by Fisher et al. (1964). On the other hand Halac (1961, 1962) and Holt et al. (1962) on the basis of studies in which survival on protein-free diets constituted the major stress, reached the opposite conclusion. These latter workers found essentially no difference in the survival rate of young rats on a protein-free diet following prefeeding with a normal or supernormal level of dietary protein; in a similar study Allison et al. (1964) obtained similar results to those of Holt and Halac. Previously we pointed out (Fisher et al., 1964) that the supernormal protein diet used by Halac and Holt was not balanced with respect to calories, and that in one of their experiments, the protein in the control diet was in excess of the protein …