Subacute and Chronic Liver Diseases of the White Pekin Duck

Abstract

The white Pekin duck has an unusually high incidence of serious hepatic disease. This has been of concern to commercial raisers of ducks and to those who have used the duck as an experimental animal in relatively long-term studies. This is a report of subacute and chronic liver diseases observed during the past twelve years among 8',000 accessions (100,000 necropsy examinations) of commercially reared ducks and in an experimental lot. This report does not include such acute infections as virus hepatitis (1), fowl cholera (2), salmonellosis (3), or infectious serositis (4) (P. anatipestifer infection). [Care was exercised to exclude a post-mortem liver artifact that resembles necrosis (5).] In 1953, Dougherty (6) reported that cirrhosis of the liver is the most important cause of mortality in ducks of breeder age on Long Island. Rigdon (7) reported in 1953 on an atypical cirrhosis in the duck produced by methylcholanthrene. In 1960 he found amyloid-like material in various organs of ducks that had been given methylcholanthrene (9), tobacco condensate (9), or polysorbate 80 (9). In 1961, he concluded (10) that the ducks in his earlier reports had had amyloidosis, and that this was a spontaneous disease of the duck. He described amyloidosis as he had observed it in experimental and control birds.