Breeding ducks is a pretty good deal for a home compound or for sale. They produce three types of main products: meat, eggs, fluff, as well as additional - litter.
In order to start a business, you need to buy eggs or chicks. You can constantly buy the latter, or you can display them yourself in your yard. A duck chick is called a duckling.
He is distinguished by good vitality, precocity and unpretentiousness.
Popular breeds for breeding
- musky
- Beijing
- black-breasted;
- clayey;
- cayuga (coral);
- mirror;
- white aloe;
- gray Ukrainian.
If the farmer has purchased eggs, he will need a brood hen (hens) or an incubator. It is very convenient for those who plan to take poultry for meat on a medium or large scale. The best for incubation will be eggs that have lain after laying for no more than 10 days, even in shape, of medium size for this breed.
How to leave a chick from the moment of hatching to slaughter
The incubation period is 27-28 days. The time interval of about one day before hatching is called bite. Duck chick
at this time trying to pierce the shell with his beak. It is very important to be near the ducklings when they are born, as they hatch wet, and the slightest draft becomes destructive for them. Duck babies need to be dried artificially or left to the brood hen.
Ducklings can be grown under an adult bird - a brood hen - or separately. Of course, the first method is better, but the incubator duck chick is no worse in terms of productive qualities. It is only necessary to consider some subtleties:
- the poultry room should have a constant temperature and humidity, although ducks and waterfowl, but there should not be damp in the house. The air temperature until the 6th day is 22-28 ° C, after which it is 16-18. The litter for ducklings should be dry and warm, use straw, peat, sawdust.
- A duck chick, like any other poultry, is extremely sensitive to hypothermia. It is necessary to use special drinkers for ducklings so that they do not get wet.
- Accustoming to water is done later than for brood grown under a brood hen: usually from 18-25 days.
- It is necessary to calculate the size of the premises and not to place a large number of chicks together: ducks do not tolerate crowding. The norm is 7-8 goals per square meter.
Slaughter for meat is carried out in two months, the mass of the young is 2200-2500 g. After two months, the bird begins to molt, the ducks lose weight, the weight during slaughter will be higher, but the meat yield is less.
Feeding ducklings
Duck babies are quite voracious, you need to put food in the feeders after 3-4 hours. Their diet consists of cereal mixes, cereals (oat, millet, barley) with the addition of milk, cottage cheese, vegetables, green grass. Mineral supplement in the form of crushed shells, chalk,
meat and bone meal, and from three weeks - salt - is required. Ducklings of the first days of life add a finely chopped boiled egg.
Determination of the sex of ducklings
In order to find out what gender the duck's chick needs to look into the cloaca, a small tubercle is visible near the drake in its lower part. In ducks, gender can be distinguished almost immediately after birth. In some breeds, females and males differ in color.