Quote:
CORN DOES NOT CAUSE A BIRD TO HEAT UP!!!!!!!
This is an old wives tale.
Jim
Corn does produce higher body heat.
If you don't think so you should discuss it with the people who did the BTU body heat tests.
8 BTU's of heat per bird per hour in the dead of winter.
"The dead of winter" has nothing to do with it. The same amount of heat should be produced by any metabolic process no matter what the ambient temperature may be.
Any source of calories, by definition, provides the metabolic substrate for heat production. That's what calories are. Corn, like any other grain, provides calories. Like any other grain, it will allow a homeothermic animal to maintain or increase its body temperature (or to do other things, such as hop around).
It's possible (I really have no idea) that corn may contain more calories per unit (of weight or volume, or perhaps per dollar) than other grains. Until pretty recently, that would have been considered a Very Good Thing. In humans, at least, it has a relatively high glycemic index, meaning that it causes a relatively rapid and sizeable increase in serum glucose levels compared with a similar weight of many other foods. It's also possible (I'm not an avian physiologist) that an increased serum glucose level in a chicken might somehow lead to a significant increase in body temperature. This most certainly would NOT be the case in humans. I seriously doubt this would occur in any mammals.
The only way for a homeothermic animal to increase body temperature significantly is to increase metabolism. Exercise will do it, but not much else. There are only 2 things that can happen to absorbed calories: they can be stored (as fat, glycogen, or other body components); or they can be burned. There are only 3 ways that calories can be burned: they can be used to power the general operations of the organism (such as building stuff, transporting stuff within or among cells, etc.), which does create heat; they can be burned specifically to create heat; or they can be used to create muscle motion (such as heartbeats or hopping around). Since calories are so difficult to come by in the wild, organisms will nearly always store them given a chance. Anything that increases metabolic rate (i.e., conversion of calories to heat) will reduce weight gain, which is not usually in the organism's interest.
"8 BTU's" doesn't give enough information. Is that per pound of corn fed, per bushel, or what? Is it the total heat output, or the increase attributable to feeding corn?
Dried field corn at 15% moisture produces roughly 16,200 kilojoules (or 15,300 BTU's) per kilogram in a bomb calorimeter. In order to produce 192 BTU (8 BTU per hour times 24 hours), a bomb calorimeter would have to be fed 12.5 grams of corn over the course of a day. Again, not much, but a bomb calorimeter is the most efficient way we have of converting calories into heat. A common estimate of the maximum thermal efficiency of human metabolism is around 11%. That means I'd have to eat a minimum of 113 grams or almost exactly a quarter pound of dried corn in a day to create 8 BTU per hour. If a chicken is about as efficient at converting feed to heat as I am, that would mean it would have to eat a minimum of an EXTRA quarter pound of corn per day to increase its heat output by 8 BTU per hour. That's pretty hard for me to digest, and I'll bet it would be for the chicken, too.
What I take from all this is that eating corn may increase a chicken's heat output, but so will eating anything else. I still need to be convinced that there is something magical in corn that operates differently from the constituents of other grains eaten by chickens before I'll believe that for the same calorie intake of corn it somehow produces more body heat than other stuff.
CORN DOES NOT CAUSE A BIRD TO HEAT UP!!!!!!!
This is an old wives tale.
Jim
Corn does produce higher body heat.
If you don't think so you should discuss it with the people who did the BTU body heat tests.
8 BTU's of heat per bird per hour in the dead of winter.
"The dead of winter" has nothing to do with it. The same amount of heat should be produced by any metabolic process no matter what the ambient temperature may be.
Any source of calories, by definition, provides the metabolic substrate for heat production. That's what calories are. Corn, like any other grain, provides calories. Like any other grain, it will allow a homeothermic animal to maintain or increase its body temperature (or to do other things, such as hop around).
It's possible (I really have no idea) that corn may contain more calories per unit (of weight or volume, or perhaps per dollar) than other grains. Until pretty recently, that would have been considered a Very Good Thing. In humans, at least, it has a relatively high glycemic index, meaning that it causes a relatively rapid and sizeable increase in serum glucose levels compared with a similar weight of many other foods. It's also possible (I'm not an avian physiologist) that an increased serum glucose level in a chicken might somehow lead to a significant increase in body temperature. This most certainly would NOT be the case in humans. I seriously doubt this would occur in any mammals.
The only way for a homeothermic animal to increase body temperature significantly is to increase metabolism. Exercise will do it, but not much else. There are only 2 things that can happen to absorbed calories: they can be stored (as fat, glycogen, or other body components); or they can be burned. There are only 3 ways that calories can be burned: they can be used to power the general operations of the organism (such as building stuff, transporting stuff within or among cells, etc.), which does create heat; they can be burned specifically to create heat; or they can be used to create muscle motion (such as heartbeats or hopping around). Since calories are so difficult to come by in the wild, organisms will nearly always store them given a chance. Anything that increases metabolic rate (i.e., conversion of calories to heat) will reduce weight gain, which is not usually in the organism's interest.
"8 BTU's" doesn't give enough information. Is that per pound of corn fed, per bushel, or what? Is it the total heat output, or the increase attributable to feeding corn?
Dried field corn at 15% moisture produces roughly 16,200 kilojoules (or 15,300 BTU's) per kilogram in a bomb calorimeter. In order to produce 192 BTU (8 BTU per hour times 24 hours), a bomb calorimeter would have to be fed 12.5 grams of corn over the course of a day. Again, not much, but a bomb calorimeter is the most efficient way we have of converting calories into heat. A common estimate of the maximum thermal efficiency of human metabolism is around 11%. That means I'd have to eat a minimum of 113 grams or almost exactly a quarter pound of dried corn in a day to create 8 BTU per hour. If a chicken is about as efficient at converting feed to heat as I am, that would mean it would have to eat a minimum of an EXTRA quarter pound of corn per day to increase its heat output by 8 BTU per hour. That's pretty hard for me to digest, and I'll bet it would be for the chicken, too.
What I take from all this is that eating corn may increase a chicken's heat output, but so will eating anything else. I still need to be convinced that there is something magical in corn that operates differently from the constituents of other grains eaten by chickens before I'll believe that for the same calorie intake of corn it somehow produces more body heat than other stuff.
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