Nutritional evaluation of peas for ducks

The nutritive value of four pea cultivars (AC Advantage, Carneval, CDC Mozart and Keoma) and soybean meal (SBM) was evaluated in a 102 h study with 48 male White Pekin ducks. All birds were tube-fed 25 g of dextrose at 24 and 30 h after feed withdrawal, then 25 g of each feedstuff was tubefed to eight ducks at 48 and 54 h after feed withdrawal. Excreta were quantitatively collected during the next 54 h. Endogenous nitrogen, amino acids and energy per bird in the 54 h collection period were 1.06 (plus-minus) 0.58 g, 0.047 (plus-minus) 0.025 g and 0.098 (plus-minus) 0.049 MJ respectively. There were differences (P < 0.05) in apparent amino acid digestibilities (AAAD) and true amino acid digestibilities (TAAD). On average, AAAD were 82.8, 82.0, 70.3, 82.4 and 77.7% and TAAD were 89.4, 89.2, 82.3, 89.5 and 85.3% for SBM, AC Advantage, Carneval, CDC Mozart and Keoma respectively. The nitrogen-corrected apparent and true metabolisable energy values did not differ among the pea diets and were 13.36 (plus-minus) 0.071 and 14.59 (plus-minus) 0.071 MJ kg^-1 respectively. Respective values for SBM were 12.16 (plus-minus) 0.16 and 13.39 (plus-minus) 0.16 MJ kg^-1 and both were lower (P < 0.05) than in peas.