Yup, I know nothing about what it does to the amino acid ratio, etc. All my knowledge is based entirely on experience, including my own measly 3 years, but primarily the more than five decades of hands-on breeding, showing, and raising experience of the world's highly respected duck expert, Dave Holderread. He says to cut protein percentage by adding oats or wheat. At first I did it because he said to (and his advice has never led me wrong), then I quit because I read a bunch of respectable stuff about carbs and amino acid balance, and I raised a group without cutting the protein with oats. And I ended up with a bunch of birds developing angel wing.
It's hardly peer-reviewed academic research, but then I tend to maintain a healthy skepticism for ivory tower research when it's held up against real-world experience, however macro it may be. So I come on here and people have pictures of their angel wing birds and most of the time (though, notably, not *always*) they have been feeding straight chick or duck starter without cutting the protein... then other people come on and say, "Naw, don't bother cutting the protein. It's probably not the protein causing the angel wing anyway. I've never had a problem in my entire experience raising two whole batches of ducklings so you won't either."
I realize that's not exactly what's happening here. But if I'm going to be convinced by talk of cysteine levels and methionine and absolute protein levels, it would be great to also hear what your scientists suggest, on a practical level, we do instead. Perhaps you could also tell us how many generations of domestic waterfowl have been raised using the alternate method, and what kinds of life spans and health records they demonstrate so we can compare the real-world success with that of Dave Holderread.
In the mean time, I'll go on adding oats to the duck feed after the first couple weeks and I'll go on raising angel-wing free birds. Perhaps some day I'll take the time to understand it all on a molecular level, but for now it's good enough in my book that it simply works.
rotein % is considered optimal buy Scott and Dean. Milt Scott only spent 50 years studying poultry nutrition, and Dean managed the Cornell duck Research Center on Long Island.
