The use of probiotic and antioxidants to improve welfare and production of layer duck at commercial farms for global warming mitigation

Abstract

Global warming affected increasing the risk of ducks to be more succeptable to heat stress which leads to decrease welfare and production. This research aimed to study duck welfare and productivity under probiotic and antioxidants administration at commercial farms. The method used was experiment with Completely Randomized Designed (CRD) based on factorial pattern. The treatment was dose of natural/homemade and commercial probiotics combined with vitamin C at 400 mg kg-1 and 600 mg kg-1 feed. Thus there were four treatment combinations. Each treatment was replicated five times, totally were 20 flocks of duck. Each flock had 50 laying females so there were 1 000 ducks. The treatment was conduced for 2 mo. The parameters observed included, i) duck welfare based on Heterophyl/Lymphocyte (H/L) ratio; ii) egg production consisted of (a) duck day production, and (b) egg weight. This study concluded that administration of combination between homemade probiotic and vitamin C at 600 mg kg-1 feed significantly (p < 0.05) increased duck welfare and egg production but did not affect egg weight.