Effects of dietary energy and methionine on growth performance and carcass traits of growing Pekin ducks from 15 to 42 days of age.

A 2 × 5 factorial experiment, using 2 dietary metabolizable energy (ME) levels (10.82, 12.95 MJ/kg) and 5 supplemental methionine (Met) levels (0, 0.075, 0.15, 0.225, and 0.30%), was conducted to investigate the effects of dietary energy and Met levels on growth performance and carcass traits of Pekin ducks from 15 to 42 D of age. A total of 300 15-day-old male Pekin ducks were randomly allocated to 10 groups with 6 replicates in each group and 5 ducks per replicate. The results showed that ducks those fed the basal diets without Met supplementation had poor growth performance. The ADG was increased (P < 0.001), and the ADFI and feed conversion ratio (FCR) decreased (P < 0.001) when Met were supplemented in diets. The ADFI and FCR were decreased (P < 0.001), while ADG was not affected (P > 0.05) when dietary ME level increased from 10.82 to 12.95 MJ/kg. Dietary Met supplementation increased the yields of eviscerated carcass (P = 0.007) and breast meat (P < 0.001), and decreased abdominal fat (P < 0.001), but increasing dietary energy level resulted in an adverse effect on carcass traits. We observed an interaction effect on FCR between dietary energy and supplemental Met level (P = 0.033). According to the broken-line models, Met requirements of growing Pekin ducks for optimal FCR at 10.82 and 12.95 MJ/kg of ME were 0.406 and 0.502% when expressed as percentage of diet, or 0.376 and 0.388 when expressed as g/MJ ME of diet, respectively. According to the t-test, Met requirements were different (P < 0.05) when expressed as percentage of diet, but had no difference (P > 0.05) when expressed as g/MJ ME of diet in both dietary ME levels. It indicated that Met requirement was affected by dietary ME level, but the Met/ME ratio was relatively constant in diet of Pekin ducks from 15 to 42 D of age.