Abstract
ObjectiveThis study was conducted to investigate the effects of age and diet forms on growth-development patterns, serum metabolism indicators, and parameters of body fat deposition in Cherry Valley ducks.MethodsAccording to the hatching age and initial weight, a total of 150 1-day-old male SM3 Cherry Valley ducks were randomly assigned to two diet forms (pellet vs powder form). Each treatment had with 5 replicates per treatment and 15 meat ducks per replicate. The study lasted 42 d, which was divided into two periods (1 to 21 vs 22 to 42 d).ResultsOur results showed that compared with powder group, ducks in pellet group had greater growth performance during different period (p<0.05). The inflection point was 24 d and was not numerically affected by diet forms. Increasing age (42 vs 21 d) significantly increased the weight of body fat and hepatic fat metabolism related enzyme activities in ducks (p<0.05), meanwhile, increasing age (42 vs 21 d) improved serum metabolism indicators and decreased mRNA expression levels of fat metabolism-related genes in liver (p<0.05). Ducks fed different diets (pellet vs powder form) increased growth performance as well as the weight of body fat and improved serum metabolism indicators (p<0.05). In addition, interactions were found between age and diet forms on the levels of serum metabolism indicators in ducks (p<0.05).ConclusionIn conclusion, powder feed reduced growth performance of ducks, and the day of inflection point was 24 days old. Ducks with higher age or fed with pellet diet showed higher fat deposition. The effect of age and feed forms on body fat deposition might result from changes in the contents of serum metabolism indicators, key enzyme activity of lipid production, and hepatic gene expressions.
Highlights
With the deeper research of animal nutrition science, production performance and feed utilization rate of animals have been greatly improved
Similar findings were observed on chicks by other researchers, and they reported that the linear function could accurately predict the daily feed intake of 0 to 21 d chicks, while the accumulated intake of 0 to 21 d chicks could be better predicated by quadratic polynomial than that of linear function [12]
Animal feed intake is generally affected by many factors, when these factors are relatively stable, FI is mainly regulated by body weight (BW) and age
Summary
With the deeper research of animal nutrition science, production performance and feed utilization rate of animals have been greatly improved. New problems (excessive body fat deposition, decline in meat quality etc.) subsequently appear, which requires researchers to strengthen the relevant basic research. Over the past two decades, improving the status of body fat deposition in animals has become a research focus, since excessive body fat deposition could reduce meat quality and feed utilization rate of animals but threaten animal health, and resulting in serious human health damage and subsequently critical economic losses to society [1,2]. An essential component of animal muscle, plays an important role in meat quality. Fat deposition in animals can influence feed cost, meat quality, and human health
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