Sodium is the most important cation in extracellular fluids and it is essential for normal metabolism of plants and animals. All animals have tendency to consume salt. Ringer (1881) demonstrated the importance of sodium as an essential component of laboratory culture.

The use of sodium for patients with cholera has beneficial effects. Sodium deficiency reduces osmotic pressure and changes the acid-base balance in the body. In this case, when heart function decrease, so the blood pressure decreases and hematocrit increases and then the elasticity of tissues decreases. Therefore, decrease in adrenal function, the amount of uric acid in the blood increases, which cause shock and death of animals.

When sodium deficiency is less in poultry, it causes delays growth, softness bones, keratinizes the cornea, reduces food usability and ultimately, and reduces plasma volume. This problem in lying hens cause reduce egg production, growth is impaired and finally cause cannibalism. When you are feeding a formulated diet to animals, they are very dependent on the nutritional balance in every bag of feed. Because chickens are highly selected for rapid growth (broiler breeds) or for high reproductive levels (egg-producing breeds), nutritional problems show up quickly. Those problems can arise because of the content of the feed, whether it is adequately mixed, or how it is stored.

Several diseases such as diarrhea or disease that related to kidneys or adrenal glands, cause drain sodium from animals ‘body.

Sodium salts are easily absorbed. Increasing sodium doesn’t a problem for poultry, provided that the diets don’t contain much sodium; birds and poultry will increase their water intake. Due to the ability of birds when consume drinking water, sodium poisoning is not usually observed. But sometimes birds drink too much water, that is cause signs of poisoning because water is transferred to cells.