Ветеринария сегодня (Jul 2021)
Morphological characterization of spleen and bursa of Fabricius of Pekin ducks in selenium-deficient area
Abstract
The study was aimed at examination of age-related morphology of spleen and bursa of Fabricius of Pekin ducks with a dietary selenium deficiency and its correction with an organic selenium additive. The experimental study was carried out in 85 day-old ducks divided into two groups, control group and test group, 40 ducks per group, the experiment lasted for 120 days. Control group was fed with standard mixed feed for meat-type poultry. The test group of ducks was fed with the feed supplemented with DAFS-25k organic selenium additive, 1.3 mg/kg of feed, that fully compensated selenium deficiency. The study showed that the dynamics of absolute body weights and relative weight gains in control and test groups correlated to the general biological pattern – increase in absolute parameters and decrease in relative parameters were dependent on age. Therewith, maximum relative weight gain intensity was reported at the age of 15 days and maximum increase in relative spleen and bursa of Fabricius weights was reported in at the age of 30 days. Weight gain parameter drastically decreased on day 75 and remained low up to the age of 120 days. Changes in the relative spleen and bursa of Fabricius weights were non-linear throughout the study. Therewith, in ducks of all ages tested spleen parameters remained approximately at the same level but bursa of Fabricius parameters changed – relative weight of bursa of Fabricius decreased by the age of 45 days and then increased again by the age of 75 days. Relative weight gains and relative spleen weights of ducklings in test group were higher than that ones of ducklings in control group during the examined ontogenesis periods. The opposite pattern was observed for bursa of Fabricius: the above-mentioned parameters in test group were lower than that ones in control group. It was concluded that organic selenium additive had a positive effect on development of the immune system organs and reduced the stress factor impact on duckling organism.
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