Oral Food Slurry Injection for Newly Hatched Poults

INTRODUCTION EARLY poult mortality has been a major concern of the turkey industry. When birds fail to eat, the deaths are due to starvation (starveouts). Prefeeding has been studied and recommended by others (Jensen et al., 1956; Moreng and Settle, 1967; Moreng et al., 1970; and Waldroup and Harris, 1969); however, these studies have not included food slurries made from turkey starter types of diets. The objective of this research was to observe the effect on poult performance when newly hatched poults were given an oral dose of an excellent diet as a slurry mixed with water. Performance from the food slurry treatment was compared to that from oral injection of an antibiotic-vitamin-sugar mixture (AVSM) solution. MATERIALS AND METHODS The experiment included four treatments: 1. an uninjected control 2. oral injection of the food slurry (see Table 1) 3. oral injection of antibiotic-vitamin-sugar mixture (AVSM) (Table 2) 4. oral injection…