Early Diet Dilution with 40% Rice Hull Induces Lower Body Fat and Lipid Metabolic Programming in Peking Ducks

This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of early diet dilution with 40% rice hull on growth performance, carcass characteristic and composition of meat-type ducks, and to reveal the possible mechanism for decreased body fat deposition. 160 1-day-old White Peking ducks with initial body weight of $44.5{\pm}1.0$ g were allotted to two treatments with 8 replicate pens per treatment and 10 ducks per pen (5 male and 5 female). Ducks were fed with the experimental starter diets diluted with 0% (control, RH0), 40% rice hull (RH40) during 8 to 14 d of age, respectively. Thereafter, all ducks were fed with grower diet. Ducks fed with RH40 diet from 8 to 14 d of age increased (p<0.05) feed intake, decreased (p<0.05) body weight, body weight gain and adjusted feed intake (excluded rice hull), abdominal fat, skin with fat, and fat content in carcass, and reduced (p<0.05) activities of hepatic malic dehydrogenase, glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase and fatty acid synthetase. When diet dilution was withdrawn in the re-fed period from 15 to 42 d of age, full compensatory growth of body weight, breast meat and leg meat weight were attained. However, ducks were still less (p<0.05) carcass fat content and showed continually lower (p<0.05) hepatic lipogenic enzyme activities at the market age in RH40 ducks than the control. These results indicated that diluting diet with 40% rice hull during 8 to 14 d of age might be a suitable method to improve feed efficiency, and to reduce carcass fat deposition in the production of meat-type ducks.