New Technology of Waterfowl Breeding: Dry Breeding Model with High Benefit and Environmental Protection

China is the world's largest producer of waterfowl, with meat ducks, egg ducks and geese accounting for about 70% of the world's total. With the improvement of technology, the way of waterfowl breeding is also being upgraded from "extensive to environment-friendly". What are the new technologies in the field of waterfowl breeding? What are the advantages over the traditional farming model? What are the current economic benefits of waterfowl farming? And how to choose the right breed of waterfowl?

The big shot of today

Hou Shuisheng

Chief scientist of the national waterfowl industry technology system

Researcher, Beijing Institute of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences

In the past 20 to 30 years, China's waterfowl industry has made great progress, whether in variety, breeding technology, feed, or in food processing, have made a series of great progress.

The waterfowl industry provides three different types of products: meat, eggs and down, all of which are of high economic value. In 2018, we produced about 3.5 billion ducks, about 7 million tons of duck meat and 1.5 million tons of goose meat. The cumulative output of duck and goose meat accounted for about 10% of China's total meat production.

"dry raising of waterfowl" can improve the survival rate of ducks and geese

Question: what are the new technologies in the field of waterfowl breeding? What are the advantages over the traditional farming model?

Hou Shuisheng:

Dry breeding of waterfowl is mainly used to replace our previous water farming. This mode of raising ducks and geese in the whole room is mainly focused on raising ducks and geese, including two kinds, one is online breeding, the other is thick bedding breeding.

Online breeding is to put ducks or geese on the Internet, and its life, feeding, drinking, and activities are all carried out online, and its feces fall to the ground through the net and are cleared away at any time. In this way, the environment in the waterfowl house can be controlled very effectively. This indoor closed feeding method has achieved a high degree of automation, and the indoor environmental indicators can meet the needs of waterfowl.

Another aspect is the feeding of thick bedding material. A large number of rice husks are now used as cushions in waterfowl houses, which have good water absorption and can provide a good and comfortable environment for ducks and geese. At the same time, the excreta can be turned into organic fertilizer after fermentation.

If the water source is used in a large area, it will cause a lot of pollution to the water surface. On the one hand, waterfowl pollutes the water source, on the other hand, the polluted water source also has a great impact on the health of waterfowl, these two aspects interact with each other, so after our development of very mature dry farming technology, the health level of ducks has been greatly improved. For example, under dry farming conditions, the survival rate of ducks and geese can reach 98% or even 99%, so from this index, its health level is very high.

Question: you do not recommend farmers to keep waterfowl freely under the forest?

Hou Shuisheng:

In fact, this kind of farming is unscientific. Why? That is, its input is uncontrollable. What kind of food do ducks or geese eat outdoors? We don't know. What kind of water did you drink? We don't know. Only under artificial control, we give it clean drinking water and give it very nutritious feed, so that the quality of meat will be better.

Duck food processing industry develops rapidly, "dry raising of waterfowl" brings out ecological benefits.

Question: some farmers think that feeding formula feed to waterfowl is not very good, is it in fact so?

Hou Shuisheng:

Actually this is not so. Formula feed is the use of nutritional principles, such as corn, soybean meal, cottonseed meal, rapeseed meal and other feed resources, according to scientific calculation, prepared to meet the nutritional needs of waterfowl. Therefore, compound feed is actually a type of feed with high feed conversion efficiency, good nutritional quality, and can ensure the health of waterfowl. Through the continuous improvement of waterfowl feed quality, we have effectively improved the growth rate of ducks and the quality of meat and eggs at the same time.

Question: compared with other breeds, what is the economic benefit of waterfowl breeding?

Hou Shuisheng:

Nowadays, everywhere you go, you will find a series of duck products such as "tasteless duck neck" and "Zhou's Black Duck". What does that mean? That is, in recent years, whether from south to north or from east to west, our duck food processing industry has developed particularly new and rapidly.

From the point of view of producing high quality protein, the efficiency of waterfowl is much higher than that of pigs, cattle and sheep. For example, for every 100 grams of feed protein, the protein used to produce poultry can produce about 24 grams, but if used to produce pig protein, it is about 18 grams, so the efficiency is very different. In terms of feed conversion efficiency, compared with the feed conversion efficiency of pigs at 3:1 and cattle and sheep at 7:1, the conversion efficiency of poultry at 2:1 is the highest.

Although the conversion efficiency of chickens is similar to that of ducks, ducks are more valuable because they have duck down. We keep ducks for 40 days, the price of duck down is about five yuan at present, so its value is very high.

Question: as a farmer, how to choose a suitable breed?

Hou Shuisheng:

Different types of food need different varieties as support. For example, Beijing roast duck needs varieties with thicker skin, higher meat quality, and higher intermuscular fat content in muscle as support; Nanjing saltwater duck needs thinner skin and lower subcutaneous fat ratio; while breeds with more developed chest muscles are used as support; Guangdong roast geese need local Magang geese as support. Therefore, in the future, we will provide different varieties according to the characteristics of food demand to promote the development of the whole food industry.

We suggest that if a rural or peasant household in a certain region wants to develop aquaculture, it is best to cooperate with local national leading enterprises or provincial leading enterprises. For example, the New Hope Liuhe Group, which has the largest number of meat ducks in China, has a processing capacity of 450 million ducks a year. It organizes more than 10,000 farmers to engage in meat duck breeding all the year round.

Source of this article: CCTV Central Radio and Television Station CCTV China Rural Voice "get Rich Youth Gang"