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Feasibility of the Chromic Oxide and the Lignin Indicator Methods for Metabolism Experiments with Chickens¹

Swiss Poultry Breeding School, Zollikofen-Bern and Department of Animal Nutrition, ETH, Zurich

The feasibility of the chromic oxide and the lignin indicator methods for metabolism experiments with chickens was examined in 6 series of digestion trials employing the conventional time collection method.

In all experiments the chromic oxide content of the day excreta differed significantly from the chromic oxide content of the night excreta. An average of 95.3% of the chromic oxide intake was recovered in the excreta. It was found that the error caused by an indicator loss of 5% is, especially in highly digestible nutrients, relatively small.

The differences between the lignin content of day and night excreta were much smaller than those between the chromic oxide content of corresponding samples. An average of 99.1% of the dietary lignin was recovered in the excreta. It was found, however, that lignin recovery is greatly affected by small variations in the concentration of the sulfuric acid used for lignin determinations.

² Present address: Department of Poultry Husbandry, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park.

Manuscript received 11 July 1955.