Water Metabolism Disturbances Related to Mortality in Day-Old Chicks Force-Fed Glucose Solutions

FELL (1959) and Pipkin (1962) observed that the chemically-characterized liquid diet of Greenstein et al. (1957), which gave growth and reproduction through several generations in rats, was highly lethal when force-fed to day-old chicks at the rate of 1 gm. of diet per hour. The liquid diet contained a mixture of glucose, l-amino acids, mineral salts and crystalline vitamins dissolved in water to give 50% solids. Characteristic symptoms exhibited by all dead or dying chicks were weight loss, diarrhea, and distention and fluid accumulation in the crop; postmortem symptoms were emaciation, dehydration and hyperemia. These symptoms and the nature of the diet (high in concentration of relatively low-molecular weight substances and consequently high in osmotic pressure) led to the hypothesis that the lethal effects were the result of a critical body water loss brought about by force-feeding of the liquid diets which have an excessively high osmotic pressure compared to…