Linkatol: choline and methyl donors for drinking water, a liver tonic for poultry

In poultry, the liver makes most of the body’s fat, and it has to export it: to the muscles, to the fat reserves and, in the laying hen, to the egg yolk. That export travels as lipoproteins, and their envelope needs phosphatidylcholine.

When demand rises faster than export capacity, fat builds up in the liver. It happens at the start of lay, on energy-rich rations, in hot weather, at a change of feed. In layers this build-up has a name, fatty liver syndrome, and recent work points to an export defect more than to overproduction.

What the field calls a liver tonic for poultry is at Linker a supply of nutrients, led by choline. It is planned as a complement to the ration, over a few days, when the liver is working hardest, and judged on how the flock performs.

Fatty liver in layers is a disease: it is managed through the ration, its energy and balance, through flock management and with the veterinarian. A flock that falls behind, rising losses or abnormal livers at slaughter call for a diagnosis, not a supplement.

Choline is used to build the phosphatidylcholine of membranes and lipoproteins, and it supplies methyl groups, like the ration’s other methyl donors. That is its function in poultry.

Choline chloride is first a feed ingredient: it is supplied continuously, through the premix. Linkatol brings it in liquid form, in the drinking water, together with other methyl donors, for short courses aimed at a given period. The two do not compete: the feed covers the everyday requirement, the water adds to it when demand rises.

Linkatol is used over a few days, at the times set out in the technical data sheet:

• Broilers, feed transition: when moving from one feed to the next.
• Broilers, before slaughter: in the last week.
• Layers, start of lay: every week in the first month, then every month.
• Ducks: regularly, from week six.

Make up the stock solution on the day of use, in a clean tank. The amount of product for the tank depends on the day’s water intake and on the dosing pump’s injection rate. Linkatol is one of our drinking water supplements; for vitamins over the same periods, see Linkastim.

• Never in the same water as a live vaccine: flush the line, vaccinate, then resume.
• With another product in the water: check compatibility before combining them; when in doubt, separate them in time.
• Storage: 24 months, cool, dry and away from light; close tightly.