Hens "sunbathe" eggs with high vitamin D content.

BEIJING, June 26
Vitamin D
is good for bone and muscle health, vitamin D deficiency increases the risk of diseases such as rickets and
osteoporosis
and
eggs
is a natural source of vitamin D. How do I get eggs to contain more vitamin D?
German
have come up with a new method: to allow hens to "sunbathe" more.
sun helps the body produce vitamin D, but to meet the body's needs, sometimes by eating foods such as fish or eggs to supplement more vitamin D. To do this, researchers at the University of Harley-Wittenberg in Germany hope to find a way to add vitamin D to their food and select eggs as their subjects.
to stimulate the production of vitamin D in hens, which in turn increases the amount of vitamin D in eggs, the researchers used artificial "sunbathing" - ultraviolet lamps - in chicken coops. The vitamin D content in eggs increased three to fourfold after just three weeks under six hours of UV exposure, but this did not increase further over the next few weeks.
study also found that the extra UV light did not pose any obvious problems for hens, who neither avoided the area around the UV lamp nor acted in any particular way.
the experiment showed that the method of "sunbathing" hens could be used in regular chicken coops, the researchers said. The findings have been published in the American journal Poultry Science.