The digestive system of the duck has been described, and unlike the chicken it does not have a diverticulum and the crop is merely a widening of the oesophagus, as opposed to a storage organ in fowl. In the duck, this controls movement of feed to theproventriculus and may be responsible for the rapid rate of digesta passing through their digestive tract. Gastric digestion occurs in the gizzard. There is not much information available on fibre digestion (fermentation) but ducks appear to cope well with fibre in their diet. One experiment compared thedigestibility of fibrous components in rye grass, and found that adult Pekin ducks digested 28.3% of the crude fibre, which was similar to adult geese and mule ducks.
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