Abstract
Drinking hydrogen-rich water shows a remarkable antioxidant effect in preventive and therapeutic applications. However, there is no previous report and information on ammonia (NH3) production and duck litter quality when hydrogen water was supplied to ducks. This study verified the effects of supplying hydrogen water to ducks on NH3 production and duck litter quality in a duck rearing environment. A total of 1,200 0-d-old Pekin ducks were divided into 2 groups of similar body weight (3 replicates with 200 ducks per pen) and used for 42 days. The two groups consisted of general water and hydrogen water in the water supply system, as the control and treatment groups, respectively. There were no statistical differences between two groups for NH3 contents for the five weeks (p>0.05), except for week 6. For litter quality, no effects (p>0.05) between the two water groups were found in the pH, total nitrogen (TN), ammonia-N (VBN), and VFA content of litter. The only significant difference observed in duck litter quality was litter moisture contents (p<0.05). Lastly, mineral and heavy metal contents did not significantly differ between the two water groups. As the first pen trials evaluating the effects of hydrogen water on duck litter, these results verify that supplying hydrogen water to ducks did not influence ammonia and duck litter quality.
Highlights
A major problem being faced by the poultry industry is the accumulation of large amounts of litter generated through the poultry production cycle (Bolan et al, 2010)
Besides being used as fertilizer for crop production, which is one of its environmental benefits, poultry litter has recently been considered as an energy source that can be made available in the form of biogas (Dalólio et al, 2017; Pedroza et al, 2021)
The data obtained from the current study suggests that supplying hydrogen water to ducks did not reduce NH3 production in the duck litter during the experimental period
Summary
A major problem being faced by the poultry industry is the accumulation of large amounts of litter generated through the poultry production cycle (Bolan et al, 2010). These materials are applied to land or reused as litter during the production cycle. Zhang et al (2016) reported that pre-treatment with hydrogen-rich water mitigated depressive-like behaviors in mice through the suppression of the inflammasome activation. Based on these results, we hypothesized that supplying hydrogen-rich water to ducks could have an effect on NH3 production and litter quality. There had previously been no studies evaluating the effect of hydrogen-rich water on duck litter
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