64



W L. English—Birds and Vitamins



or bird suffers in health. The addition of the appropriate vitamin

restores the sufferer.


I suggest an instance of vitamin-activity of interest to aviculturists.


Lime salts with vitamin D are necessary to a bird’s existence.

Lime salts (calcium) are necessary for the general mechanism, for

heart-beats, bone-growth, and feather-growth, for the requirements of

the growing embryo, and for the formation of egg-shell. Now, it is a

well-known fact that birds whose young are hatched in a developed

condition have thick egg-shells, while birds whose young are hatched

undeveloped have thin egg-shells. Necessarily, birds which must fend

for themselves on hatching have sturdy legs, feathers, beak, etc. The

growing embryo absorbs lime from the shell during incubation, to form

bones, feathers, and beak, the shell gets more fragile, the bird breaks

through and runs oh.


In the nest, with naked and helpless young, lime salts are supplied

by the parents with food, after hatching. It was thought that the thick

shell was a protection, and it is ; it is a protection against a shortage

of lime salts, which means rickety, undeveloped young.


Science means knowledge. It is a scientific or known fact that this

process only takes place in the presence of vitamin D. The embryo

obtains this necessary vitamin D from the mother bird.


Apply this knowledge to “ soft eggs The mother bird needs

vitamin D and lime salts for her own use ; if she is short of either

the embryo must go short and the embryo lacks the hard shell necessary

for its existence.


Vitamin D is necessary for the assimilation of calcium, and all the

lime salts in the world, whether in oats or anything else, will not prevent

harm to the organism if vitamin D be absent.


Rickets is a defective calcium metabolism, caused by the absence

of vitamin D. But, and it is a big but for Aviculturists, birds and

animals can manufacture their own vitamin D in their skin-coverings

of hairs or feathers under the influence of sunlight or the ultra¬

violet ray.


Vitamin D and Tuberculosis


Generally nature’s method of protection against the bacillus is to

enclose the diseased area in a calcareous mass of lime salts. During



