Some thoughts about vitamin deficiency in ducklings

[LaurelC]

I have been doing some thinking about the nutritional content of eggs, and how eggs from birds that are allowed to forage or free range tend to have higher omega3mega6 ratio, more beta carotene, more A, D, E, B12, and folate than those of birds fed a "conventional" diet. Then I started thinking about all of the vitamin deficiencies that we seem to see in ducklings. It seems clear that ducklings have more micronutrient needs than chicks, but I wonder if the primary problem that we're running into (most of the ducklings with deficiencies severe enough to impair them or cause neurological problems) is that the mothers are fed standard layer feed in a hatchery type environment, resulting in lower (that "natural") nutrient content in the eggs, thus a built-in deficiency in some of the nutrients vital in early development.

It seems that by far, many of the ducklings that we see here with neurological or vitamin deficiency issues come from feed stores or hatcheries. Is that an accurate assessment?

This is meant more as a way to have a dialog about why so many ducklings we see are having vitamin deficiency problems, where in the wild, the rate at which this seems to occur would be unacceptable in terms of survival.

 

[Amiga]

I have wondered about this myself, LaurelC. There are breeder rations, but perhaps even those are deficient in vitamins.

I have also read that the nutritional content of some foods is not the same as it was 60 years ago due to depletion of nutrients in soil (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and-nutrition-loss/)

One of the blessings of the increased interest in backyard ducks is the growing body of information about them. Backyard keepers - at least in my case - have a bit more time to spend observing ducks and rather than chalking up losses, many of us seem to dig in and work to find the cause of health problems and their resolutions.

 

[LaurelC]

A new thought that I just had

I wonder if part of the problem with hatchery birds is also that they are selected for based less on the long-term survival of their offspring (as they would be in the wild or even in a more long-term care situation) and more on the quantity of eggs they're capable of laying. A higher laying rate could theoretically negatively affect the micronutrient content of each egg. Let's say a duck is capable of uptaking 100mg of any particular vitamin each week. If she lays 7 eggs that week, that's a little over 14mg of that nutrient per egg. If she lays 5 eggs that week, it's 20mg of the nutrient per egg. As it has been shown, a bird fed "standard" feed without the option to free range has room for improvement already in terms of nutritional value in her eggs, it seems that they are already spread thinner than could be expected in the wild in terms of vitamin content per egg. I'm not sure if any of that made sense. I'm terrible at getting this stream-of-consciousness supposition into writing in any type of palatable format.

 

[Amiga]

I am with you, LaurelC.

This would be a good question to pose some of the hatchery folk, I would not assume one way or the other about their breeding criteria.