Effects of auditory enrichment on Pekin duck production and welfare

Few studies have looked at the effects of auditory enrichment on the production and welfare of poultry species, while none have looked at Pekin ducks specifically. We utilized 400 grow-out Pekin ducks obtained on day-of-hatch from a commercial hatchery and evenly and randomly placed into 4 pens in 3 rooms. Each room was randomly assigned one of three audio treatments: control (CON; no auditory enrichment), classical music (MOZ; Mozart's String Quintets) or pond sounds (POND; Pond Sounds - Relaxator on Apple Music®). Ducks were housed to closely approximate industry standards for density with30 ducks/pen. The POND and MOZ audio started on week 1 (day 7) and were played starting at 0300h (lights on) until 2100h (lights off) one hour on, one hour off, in a cyclic manner with a range of 65-75dB. Body condition scores were taken on 10 birds/pen/week (final N=80 ducks/treatment/week) using a published rubric. Production data were collected weekly. On weeks 2, 4, and 6, two ducks/pen were euthanized using pentobarbital and organ and body weights were recorded (final N=16 ducks/treatment/week). Body condition scores were analyzed using the PROC LOGISTIC procedure (SAS v9.4) and odds ratios were calculated. All other data were analyzed by 2-way ANOVA with repeated measures using PROC MIXED (SAS v9.4) and Tukey's test for post-hoc analyses. A p≤0.05 was considered significant. The study was repeated, resulting in experiment 1 and experiment 2. For experiment 1, no significant differences were observed among groups for weekly body weights, dissection measures, or FCR. For experiment 2, ducks in the MOZ group weighed less than ducks in the POND (p=0.0010) and CON groups (p=0.0109). MOZ ducks had worse feather cleanliness scores, worse foot pad scores, and worse feather quality scores than POND and CON ducks. These present differing results, so future research is needed to fully understand how different auditory enrichment affects the production and welfare of Pekin ducks under more specific flock conditions.