Vitamin A

[MrsPeterTHooper]

I just read that vitamin A deficiency can lead to blood spots in the eggs which I've seen in some of my eggs. Anyone have any good ideas on what to give to my chickens to give them extra vitamin A?

 

[chickengeorgeto]

The only true, serviceable, and readily available source of vitamin A is found in animal products. Especially organ meats like liver.

 

[TalkALittle]

I've read that fish liver oil and fish meal are good sources of vitamin A. http://www.extension.org/pages/67357/feeding-fishmeal-to-poultry#.VZKL-GIpDFo

 

[DaQatz]

The only true, serviceable, and readily available source of vitamin A is found in animal products.  Especially organ meats like liver.

Depends on where you live. Around my area there is a ton of Poke Weed(Phytolacca Americana) Although it's eaten as shoots. It's generally considered to be poison. The "poison" in poke weed is toxic levels of vitamin A. Simply boiling the plant and using the water from the boil to carefully dose the chicken water would help as a supplement.

 

[TalkALittle]

I don't know that it is just vitamin A that makes poke toxic. I think it contains other saponins that contribute tto it's toxicity. The problem I see with using it is that at different times of the year the toxicity level of poke varies. Also toxicity of shoots, stems, and leaves varies. Depending on how long you boil it for, the amount of toxin in the water will vary.

Poke weed is one of those plants that you get a wide variety of anecdotal stories about accidental poisonings. I feel it's due to all the different variables surrounding the different ways of preparing it. Poke weed can kill you though so I wouldn't feel comfortable trying to dose my chickens with it, nor recommending others to.

 

[glib]

greens have plenty beta carotene. so anything green.

 

[DaQatz]

Well I do cook and eat Poke. it is all in what part you use, and how you prepare it. if it's just a few drops of water from the first boil of shoots. Then it's likely just going to supplement, and not be an issue.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

I've read that fish liver oil and fish meal are good sources of vitamin A. http://www.extension.org/pages/67357/feeding-fishmeal-to-poultry#.VZKL-GIpDFo

Depends on where you live. Around my area there is a ton of Poke Weed(Phytolacca Americana) Although it's eaten as shoots. It's generally considered to be poison. The "poison" in poke weed is toxic levels of vitamin A. Simply boiling the plant and using the water from the boil to carefully dose the chicken water would help as a supplement.

I don't know that it is just vitamin A that makes poke toxic. I think it contains other saponins that contribute tto it's toxicity. The problem I see with using it is that at different times of the year the toxicity level of poke varies. Also toxicity of shoots, stems, and leaves varies. Depending on how long you boil it for, the amount of toxin in the water will vary.

Poke weed is one of those plants that you get a wide variety of anecdotal stories about accidental poisonings. I feel it's due to all the different variables surrounding the different ways of preparing it. Poke weed can kill you though so I wouldn't feel comfortable trying to dose my chickens with it, nor recommending others to.

greens have plenty beta carotene. so anything green.

I am sorry but there are no vegetable sources of REAL vitamin A.

Beta carotene is not Vitamin A and for beta carotene to become the fat soluble vitamin A it must be converted into REAL or Preexisting Vitamin A by a complex but not always reliable process inside of the body.

Here is an example of what a lack of vitamin A can do to your body.

In the developing world millions go blind or die from vitamin A deficiency.



Likewise here is some of the things that eating too much real, or preexisting vitamin A can do to your body.

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/83/2/191.full

"Dietary vitamin A is obtained from preformed vitamin A (ie, retinyl esters from animal foods, fortified foods, and pharmaceutical supplements) as well as from provitamin A carotenoids from plant sources. Preformed vitamin A is efficiently absorbed and utilized by humans at absorption rates of 70–90%. Up to 75% of dietary vitamin A in Europe, the United States, and other industrialized nations is preformed vitamin A (1, 2), which is largely derived from multivitamins, fish liver oil, and the fortification of foods such as milk, butter, margarine, breakfast cereals, and some snack foods. In developing nations, however, 70–90% of vitamin A is obtained from provitamin A carotenoids in plant foods. These are absorbed much less efficiently, at rates of 20–50%, depending on each person's vitamin A status and other dietary and nondietary factors (3, 4). The cleavage of provitamin A carotenoids to retinal is a highly regulated step, and vitamin A toxicity from provitamin A sources is largely impossible. In contrast, absorption and hepatic storage of preformed vitamin A occur very efficiently until a pathologic condition develops."

The human (i don't know about a chickens') body is only able to convert a relieve small amount of beta carotene into real vitamin A. The good side of eating excess beta carotene containing greens and other veggies is that it is impossible (supposedly) to kill ones fool self by eating too many carrots, but you can certainly turn your skin as orange as a pumpkins'.

A lot of bull, especially about health became ingrained in Western Culture starting in the 1870s when a certain Battle Creek Doctor named John Harvey Kellogg hung out his shingle after a year at the University of Michigan School of Medicine and a short internship at Bellevue Hospital in NYC. Dr. Kellogg started or rather restarted this bull after the first guru of healthy eating started it in the early 1800s. Dr. Kellogg simply went on a one man campaign against the real villains; hot food, coffee, tea, beer, wine, sugar, meat, vinegar, non marital sex, eating eggs, fat food, eating anything seasoned with salt, spices, pepper (both hot and sweet, red, green, or black) white bread, along with tight fitting underwear, loose underwear, and any and all other forms of debauchery, like dancing in circles or sleeping with your husband or wife. But I don't wont to be too hard on the good doctor, he and his sponsor were influenced by The Reverend (of Graham Cracker fame) Sylvester Graham who obviously believed that he could teach his accolades how to live forever if they would only shelled out enough moo-la (cash in-advance only please) to attend one of his seminars on healthy eating. Where is Dr. Oz when you need him? Despite a number of close calls with the New England butchers, bakers, grocers, millers, and farmers rioting and burning down Graham's rented lecture halls (often before Rev. Graham unlike Elvis had left the building) The Reverend Graham did enjoy some initial success, that is until he died young and got the well deserved reputation of being a fraud and a mountebank. The next link is too a downloadable version of one of Kellogg's many books courtesy of Harvard University. Don't worry, it is out of copyright protection but this book is where the Victorian era learned the facts of life.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19924/19924-h/19924-h.htm

In fact one of Dr. Kellogg's Battle Creek competitors, a dude i believe who's last name was Post, also made a fortune in breakfast foods by using the slogan... "...It makes your blood red..." Talk about truth in advertising....

I've said it before but it needs repeating, don't believe 'nothing' that you hear on TV and even less of the "stuff" that you see on the flickering boob tube."

 

[glib]

Yes, that is why I said beta carotene. I do not know what the efficiency (of conversion of beta carotene into retinol) for chicken is. I know for goats and sheep it is close to 100%, for cows is around 25%, and for humans it can be anywhere between 3 and 30%. But it is impossible to have a vitamin A deficiency with a diet rich in greens. One provision is that some fats be ingested, as carotenoids are fat soluble. so plenty of greens, and some sources of fats in the diet, to be eaten concurrently.

 

[Ov4thinkr]

I don't know that it is just vitamin A that makes poke toxic. I think it contains other saponins that contribute tto it's toxicity. The problem I see with using it is that at different times of the year the toxicity level of poke varies. Also toxicity of shoots, stems, and leaves varies. Depending on how long you boil it for, the amount of toxin in the water will vary.

Poke weed is one of those plants that you get a wide variety of anecdotal stories about accidental poisonings. I feel it's due to all the different variables surrounding the different ways of preparing it. Poke weed can kill you though so I wouldn't feel comfortable trying to dose my chickens with it, nor recommending others to.

Yes, that is why I said beta carotene. I do not know what the efficiency (of conversion of beta carotene into retinol) for chicken is. I know for goats and sheep it is close to 100%, for cows is around 25%, and for humans it can be anywhere between 3 and 30%. But it is impossible to have a vitamin A deficiency with a diet rich in greens. One provision is that some fats be ingested, as carotenoids are fat soluble. so plenty of greens, and some sources of fats in the diet, to be eaten concurrently.

40% of the world's population lack the gene that convert any beta carotene to vitamin A. The rest only a small percentage. It is very possible to be deficient in vitamin A if you can't convert beta carotene and are not eating eggs or other animal sources of vitamin A in the form of retinol.
An issue with eating greens such as spinach and chard, is the high oxalate content that prevents the absorption of calcium, magnesium, zinc, and iron. The oxalates also form crystals with calcium that cause pain and inflammation throughout the body over time as it accumulates. Green smoothies, bran muffins, almond products, and tea caused decades of fibromyalgia, bladder pain, and knee pain for me. When I learned about oxalates and cut them out, all of my pain went away.
Oxalates also prevent minerals from being absorbed in chickens.