The Effect of a Dietary Antibiotic on the Requirement of the Turkey Poult for Potassium

Abstract PREVIOUS work in this laboratory indicated that a minimum of 0.6% potassium is required in purified poult diets to insure maximum early growth (Supplee and Combs, 1959). In contrast, Kratzer et al. (1958) failed to obtain a growth response from additional potassium with a purified diet estimated to contain not over 0.4% potassium. The diets used by the latter group contained an antibiotic while our diets did not. Because of previous reports indicating that the utilization of calcium (Migicovsky et al., 1951) and manganese (Pepper et al., 1953) are improved in the presence of an antibiotic, experiments were conducted to determine the effect of an antibiotic on the potassium requirement of poults. Diets were prepared to contain 0.35 to 0.6% potassium by varying the level of K2HPO4 in the diet shown in Table 1. These levels included 0.05% potassium from other dietary components as determined by analysis of several diets… .