POTASSIUM-DEFICIENCY IN THE ADULT MALE CHICKEN

Adult male chickens, which were maintained on a low dietary potassium intake for 11 weeks showed no gross abnormalities, but had significantly reduced feed intake and losses of body weight. Adult male chickens had a physiological capacity to increase the biological half life of their body potassium from 18 to 134 days when the dietary potassium was reduced from .32 to .02%. However, the deficient birds were unable to balance their intake with the excretion because of the obligatory loss of potassium. The relative specific activity of different tissues in adult male chickens determined at different time intervals after the intravenous injection of potassium-42 indicated that the plasma pool potassium had the highest turnover rate of potassium in the body. In decreasing order, it was followed by the skin, heart, liver, intestine, bone, and muscle. The daily balance of potassium in adult male chickens maintained under optimum and sub-optimum dietary potassium intake gave an estimated minimum requirement for this element of .06% of the diet.