The Effect of Different Lighting Sources on Pekin Duck Growth and Welfare

This study evaluated the effects of four LED lighting sources—full spectrum (FS), white (White), battery-powered lantern (Lantern), and monochromatic green (Green)—on Pekin duck growth performance, eye development, fear responses, stress susceptibility, gut health, and skeletal parameters. A total of 432 day-of-hatch Pekin ducklings were assigned to one of four light treatments (n = 9 replicate pens per treatment) and reared from d 0 to 35. Body weight, feed intake, and mortality-corrected feed conversion ratio were recorded, and on d 35, tonic immobility, inversion, physical asymmetry, heterophil-to-lymphocyte ratio, plasma corticosterone, ileal histomorphology, and tibia bone parameters were assessed. Green and White treatments produced greater body weight (3.28 and 3.27 kg; p = 0.002) and feed intake (145.2 and 143.3 g/d; p = 0.002) than FS and Lantern treatments, while feed conversion ratio did not differ (p = 0.73). Green and White ducks exhibited shorter tonic immobility latency to right (p = 0.02), lower composite asymmetry scores (p < 0.001), lower plasma corticosterone (p = 0.002), greater ileal villus-height-to-crypt-depth ratio (p = 0.002), and greater tibia-breaking strength (p = 0.001) compared with FS and Lantern ducks. These results demonstrate that monochromatic green and standard white LED lighting improve growth performance and multiple welfare indicators over full-spectrum and lantern-style LED sources in commercial Pekin duck production.