Vitamin B6 and Chick Nutrition

JUKES (1939a) reported that in the initial stages of a vitamin B6 deficiency chicks reduce their food consumption and grow slowly, and that in the later stages many develop spasmodic convulsions and all succumb. These symptoms were prevented by including synthetic vitamin B6 in the ration. Our investigations were not concerned primarily with vitamin B6 but our experience is in complete agreement with Jukes’s report. We were studying two abnormalities in chicks, anemia and perosis, and obtained evidence that both pathological states are due to a vitamin deficiency though there is no reason now to believe that a lack of vitamin B6 is the primary cause of either of the diseases. However, our basal relations were deficient in vitamin B6, and because of the resultant high and variable mortality, they were in some measure unsatisfactory. We had also attempted to produce dermatitis in chicks, and had observed that the mortality . . .