The involvement of dietary fat and vitamins, stress, litter and starvation on the incidence of the fatty liver and kidney syndrome in chicks

Dietary and environmental factors involved in the fatty liver and kidney syndrome (FLKS) were studied. Addition of maize oil, tallow or olive oil isoener-getically at the expense of starch to the standard high-mortality diet reduced mortality from 19 to 7 per cent. Supplementation of the standard diet with a mixture of vitamins reduced mortality to 1 per cent whereas supplementation with thiamin alone reduced it to 1 per cent. Mortality was 53 per cent higher among females than males. At 25 days of age mortality was 94 per cent higher among birds that had been subjected to repeated stressing. Withdrawal of food on day 36 resulted in a marked increase in mortality.