Effects of Melamine in Young Pekin Ducks

An experiment was conducted with male Pekin ducks to determine the toxicity of melamine (MEL) in young ducks fed dietary treatments from hatch to 21 days of age. Two hundred day-old male ducks were purchased from a commercial hatchery and assigned to one of ten treatment groups. Each treatment group consisted of five replicates with four ducks per replicate group. The diets contained 0.0, 0.25, 0.50, 0.75, 1.0, 1.25, 1.50, 1.75, 2.0 and 2.25% MEL. Compared with controls, ducks fed > 1.0% MEL had reduced feed intake and body weight gain (P 1.0% MEL. Compared with controls, ducks fed > 0.25% MEL had increased (P 0.75% MEL had increased (P 1.5% MEL in the diet can cause severe renal pathology and mortality due to renal failure in ducks. The renal pathology observed in ducks was similar to that seen in other poultry species fed toxic concentrations of MEL.