Duck nutritional metabolic disease-gout

Gout is an internal disease caused by the disturbance of protein metabolism in ducks. The main pathological feature is the accumulation of uric acid in joints or visceral organs and other interstitial tissues. The disease mostly occurs in the cold winter and early spring when there is a lack of green feed. Ducks of different breeds and ages can occur, and clinically it is more common in young ducks. Most of them are due to the subjective and one-sided pursuit of weight gain speed, ignoring the scientific allocation of feed and feeding excessive protein feed, which leads to emaciation, loss of appetite and death in serious cases. It is an important nutritional and metabolic disease that endangers the production of duck industry.

1. Pathogeny

The cause of this disease is mainly related to feed and renal dysfunction.

(1) feeding excessive protein feed, especially those rich in nuclear protein and purine bases. Common include animal offal, meat, fish meal, as well as soybean meal, spinach, lettuce, cabbage and other plants.

(2) renal insufficiency or dysfunction. The kidney function of young ducks is not complete, feeding excessive protein feed can not be absorbed by the body, on the contrary, it will increase the burden of the kidney, destroy the kidney function, and lead to the occurrence of the disease, while the cases of young ducks and adult ducks seen in clinic are mostly related to the excessive use of antimicrobials (such as sulfonamides, etc.) that damage the kidney function.

(3) lack of adequate vitamins. Such as lack of VA in feed will also promote the occurrence of the disease. In addition, dampness, poor ventilation, lack of light and intestinal inflammation caused by various diseases are the inducing factors of the disease.

two。 Clinical symptoms

According to the location of urate deposition, gout can be divided into two types, namely visceral gout and articular gout. Visceral gout: mainly seen in ducklings less than a week old, sick ducks are mentally depressed, often lose their appetite, their limbs are unable to walk and shake, are weak, and often die within 1-2 days. Young or adult ducks fall ill, often in spirit, loss of appetite, thirst at the beginning of the disease, followed by loss of appetite, thin body, inability to walk, excretion of white or semi-viscous feces containing a large amount of urate, gradual exhaustion and death, the course of disease is 3 to 7 days. Sometimes adult ducks die suddenly during capture, often due to the deposition of a large amount of uric acid on the pericardium and myocardium, affecting the contraction of the heart, leading to acute heart failure. Articular gout: mainly seen in young or adult ducks, diseased ducks have enlarged joints, touch them hard, and often limp. Sometimes the joints of both limbs are swollen, severe paralysis, and other clinical manifestations are the same as those of visceral gout. The course of the disease is about 7 to 10 days. Sometimes there are mixed cases in clinic.

3. Pathological changes

Skin and dry flippers were seen in all dead cases. Visceral type cases showed that a large number of urates deposited on the surface of visceral organs, such as a layer of heavy frost, especially pericardial deposition, pericardial thickening, attachment to the myocardium, adhesion, myocardial surface uric acid deposition; kidney swelling, flower spot-like, renal tubules full of uric acid salt, ureter dilatation, thickening, uric acid crystals, severe cases can form uric acid stones. In a few cases, there was also a small amount of urate deposition in the subcutaneous loose connective tissue. In the case of joint type, it can be seen that the diseased joint is enlarged and there are a large amount of sticky urate deposits in the joint cavity.

4. Prevention and cure measures

The main results are as follows: (1) improve feeding management, adjust feed mix proportion, appropriately reduce protein feed, and provide sufficient fresh green feed to supplement rich vitamin A.

(2) the diseased ducks should stop using antibiotics, especially those that are toxic to the kidneys, and pay attention to prevent overdose in disease prevention.