Bioavailability Of Iron In Different Sources For Chickens And Effects On Concentration Of Fe, Cu, Zn And Mn In Tissue

An experiment was conducted with 150 thirty-six days old White Leghorns chickens to estimate bioavailability of different iron sources for chickens. 3×4 factorial design was used in this experiment . Chickens were allotted randomly to ten dietary treatments with three duplicates that included an unsupplemental basal separated bean protein and corn starch and glucose diet or this basal diet supplemental with 40,80,160 mg/kg Fe concentration either as FeSO4.H2O, Fe-Met or Fe-Gly. After having been fed iron-deficient basal diet for 7 days, chickens were fed experimental diets for 14 days. The results under this experiment showed that:1. Production performance was not affected by dietary iron sources and levels. But it indicated that it could be improved by supplementing iron.2. Spleen Fe, liver Fe, and heart Fe were affected by dietary iron sources significantly. With increasing dietary iron, liver Fe and heart Fe were improved significantly. Levels of dietary iron had no significant effect on spleen Fe except between the level of 0mg/kg and 40mg/kg.3. Dietary iron sources had no significant effect on duodenum Fe, but had significant effect on jejunum Fe and ileum Fe. With increasing dietary iron, duodenum Fe, jejunum Fe and ileum Fe were improved significantly.4. Dietary iron sources had no significant effect on hemoglobin, serum Fe and serum ferritin(P>0.05). Hemoglobin, serum Fe and serum ferritin were improved by the increasing of dietary iron.5. Using different indexes, bioavailability of FeSO4, Fe-Met and Fe-Gly were different. If set bioavailability of FeSO4 as 100%, the relative bioavailability values were estimated to be 61.66%,78.71% for Fe-Met and 82.76%,63.64% for Fe-Gly while using liver Fe and duodenum Fe as indexes. However when using hemoglobin, serum Fe and serum ferritin as indexes, the relative bioavailability values were estimated to be...