Effects of Dietary Methionine Levels on Choline Requirements of Starter White Pekin Ducks

Abstract

A 2×5 factorial experiment, using 2 dietary methionine levels (0.28% and 0.48%) and 5 dietary choline levels (0, 394, 823, 1,239, and 1,743 mg/kg), was conducted to study the effects of dietary methionine status on choline requirements of starter white Pekin ducks from 7 to 28 days of age. Four hundred eighty 7-d-old male White Pekin ducks were randomly allotted to ten dietary treatments, each containing 6 replicate pens with 8 birds per pen. At 28 d of age, weight gain, feed intake, and feed/gain were measured and the legs of all ducks from each pen were examined for incidence of perosis. Perosis and growth depression were observed in choline-deficient ducks and supplementation of choline reduced perosis and significantly increased weight gain and feed intake regardless of dietary methionine levels (p<0.05). In addition, significant positive effects of dietary methionine supplementation on weight gain, feed intake, and feed/gain were observed at any choline level (p<0.05). Supplementation of 1,743 mg/kg choline in diets alleviated the depression of weight gain and feed intake caused by methionine deficiency at 0.28% methionine level. The interaction between choline and methionine influenced weight gain and feed intake of ducks (p<0.05). At 0.28% methionine level, 1,743 mg/kg choline group caused 4.92% and 3.23% amount of improvement in weight gain and feed intake compared with 1,239 mg/kg choline group, respectively. According to the broken-line regression, the choline requirements of starter Pekin ducks for weight gain and feed intake were 1,472 and 1,424 mg/kg at 0.28% methionine level and 946 and 907 mg/kg at 0.48% methionine level, respectively. It suggested the choline recommendations of starter Pekin ducks on a semi-purified diet were 1448 mg/kg at 0.28% methionine level and 927 mg/kg at 0.48% methionine level, respectively. Compared with the adequate methionine level, menthionine deficiency markedly increased the choline requirements of ducks.

Growth Performance, Blood Metabolites, Carcass Characteristics and Meat Quality of Lambs Fed Diets Containing Different Energy Levels Supplemented with Rumen-Protected Choline

“…Another possible explanation for the lack of response to RPC supplementation in this study is the presence of other methyl donors in the lamb diet and the absence of stress [33]. Indeed, the positive effect of dietary RPC on performance was observed in an experiment using a methionine-deficient diet of white Pekin ducks [34] and in stress-based experiments on male Zaraibi growing goats during the hot summer season [17]. Similar to the results found in this study, previous studies did not observe improvements in growth performance when supplementing RPC in fattening lambs [8,14,24,26,35].…”

Growth Performance, Blood Metabolites, Carcass Characteristics and Meat Quality of Lambs Fed Diets Containing Different Energy Levels Supplemented with Rumen-Protected Choline

“…Another possible explanation for the lack of response to RPC supplementation in this study is the presence of other methyl donors in the lamb diet and the absence of stress [ 41 ]. Indeed, the positive effect of dietary RPC on performance was observed in an experiment using a methionine-deficient diet of white Pekin ducks [ 42 ] and in stress-based experiments on male Zaraibi growing goats during the hot summer season [ 17 ]. These differences between studies may be attributed to several factors, such as the energy intake of the animals, the bioavailability of RPC, and the animal’s age, breed, and physiological status [ 13 ].…”

Effect of Dietary Level of DL-Methionine on Growth Performance and Some Blood Parameters in Japanese Growing Quails

“…Third, the production of polyamines requires methionine. Fourth, the most crucial source of methyl groups for methylation events involving DNA and other molecules is methionine Wen et al (2016).…”