Veterinary Archives, Vol. 74 No. 3, 2004.
Original scientific paper
Calcium, phosphorus and magnesium levels and alkaline phosphatase activity in the blood of oneday- old ostriches.
Miljenko Šimpraga
; Department of Physiology and Radiobiology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine University of Zagreb, Croatia
Jelena Raukar
; Postgraduate student, Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry University of Zagreb, Croatia
Irena Lukač Novak
; Poultry Centre, Croatian Veterinary Institute, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Considering that climatic conditions, feeding and holding conditions as well as microflora and microfauna vary from one country to another, standard values of individual ostrich health status indicators should be established on a country to country basis. This particularly applies to ostriches at their earliest stage when they are extremely sensitive to stress induced by temperature fluctuations, initial feeding (starting), change of feeding regime, imbalanced ration composition, holding pen overpopulation, etc. Potential consequences include death or abnormal growth and development from the very beginning. It is widely known that problems associated with abnormalities in skeleton development, such as tibiotarsal rotation, reduce the young chick’s resilience and increase the likelihood of its premature death and/or failure to meet production requirements. Calcium, phosphorus and magnesium metabolism disorder is one of the recognized causes of skeletal development problems. Since the available literature does not provide any information on calcium, phosphorus and magnesium levels and ALP activity in one-day-old ostriches, these elements were set as the objective of our research. The research was carried out on 10 healthy, one-day-old, unsexed ostriches of the variety Struthio camelus domesticus. The results have shown that calcium, phosphorus and magnesium levels were 2.33 mmol/L, 4.56 mmol/L, and 0.76 mmol/L, respectively, and ALP activity was 251.63 U/L. These results, although obtained on a relatively small number of birds, represent a valuable contribution to ostrich physiology because they may serve as reference values when investigating calcium, phosphorus and magnesium metabolism and/or abnormalities in skeletal development in these animals.
Keywords
one-day-old ostrich; calcium; phosphorus; magnesium; alkaline phosphatase
Hrčak ID:
67877
URI
Publication date:
21.6.2004.
Visits: 1.564 *