Weight bearing: its lack of effect on fracture healing.

The load transmitted through fresh fractures of the tarsometatarsus of adult chickens was varied by 40% more, or less, than the body weight to determine the effect of load-bearing on fracture healing. The healing fracture was examined for size and strength at 14 days, but no significant differences were detected in any group. The technique was sensitive enough to detect the differences between healing fractures at 7, 10 and 14 days. In this experiment load transmission was not found to be an important factor in fracture healing.