Effect Of Vitamin B12 On Growth Performance,hematological Indicators And Blood Biochemistry Of The White Pekin Ducks During Starter Phase

The first experiment was performed to evaluate the effect of cyanocobalamin on growth performance,hematology and plasma homocysteine concentrations of male Pekin ducks from hatch to 21 days of age on corn and soybean isolated protein base diet.A total of five-hundredtwelve,one-day-old meat-type male Pekin ducks were randomly allocated to eight treatments,i.e.,dietary cyanocobalamin(vitamin B12)concentrations of 0.00,5,10,15,20,30,40 and 1000 μg/kg,respectively in their feed.Each treatment had eight replicated pens with eight ducks for each pen.Feed and water were provided ad libitum.The experiment was conducted for 21 days.There is no literature available regarding cyanocobalamin requirement for Pekin ducks.Therefore the aim of our study was to determine the requirement of cyanocobalamin on the basis of growth performance and blood index.Different growth parameters including average daily weight gain(ADG),average daily feed intake(ADFI),feed conversion ratio(FCR),hematological indicators and plasma homocysteine concentration were evaluated.It is observed that supplemental cyanocobalamin has no significant effect on ADG,ADFI,and FCR,hematological parameters and plasma homocysteine quantification compared to the control group(P>0.05).On the basis of our results,it is concluded that cyanocobalamin had no effect(growth performance and blood index)on male Pekin ducks from hatch to day 21 of age,when it was added with corn soybean isolated protein base deit.The 2nd experiment was conducted to evaluate the requirement of cyanocobalamin of male Pekin ducks from hatch to 21 days of age on corn and soybean meal base diet.This experiment was carried out due to the unexpected(undesireable)results of our first experiment.A total of three-hundred-eighty-four,one-day-old meat-type male Pekin ducks were randomly allocated to six treatments,i.e.,dietary cyanocobalamin(vitamin B12)concentrations of 0.00,0.02,0.04,0.06,0.08 and 1.00 mg/kg,respectively in their feed.Each treatment had eight replicated pens with eight ducks for each pen.Feed and water were provided ad libitum.The experiment was conducted for 21 days.Different growth parameters including(ADG),(ADFI),(FCR),hematological indicators,plasma vitamin B12 concentrations and plasma homocysteine concentrations were evaluated.It is observed that supplemental cyanocobalamin has no significant effect on ADG,ADFI,and FCR but it improves hematological parameters such as white blood cells,red blood cells,and its indices and platelet counts compared to the control group(P<0.05).The level of total bilirubin and glucose was significantly higher in the non-supplemented vitamin B12 group as compared to vitamin B12 supplemented groups.Ducks fed without vitamin B12 supplementation group(control)had significantly higher liver weight percentage(P<0.05)as compared to vitamin B12 supplemented groups.However,there was no significant effect of vitamin B12 was observed for any other organ percentage weight of Pekin ducks.It was also observed that supplementation of vitamin B12 had no significant effect on plasma vitamin B12 concentrations as well as plasma homocysteine concentrations.On the basis of growth performance and hematological indicators,it is concluded that 0.02 mg cyanocobalamin/kg of feed with corn and soybean meal base diet is the dietary requirement of male Pekin ducks from hatch to day 21 of age.