Duck farming is one of the most profitable businesses in the world as there are many breeds available. You can raise them easily for eggs, meats, and a few other ways that we will discuss further.
Many people think that ducks are raised only in water. However, the fact is you can raise ducks even without water, in an indoor atmosphere.
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What Ducks to Raise for Profits?
When you are raising ducks for profit, you get various alternative species.
The best technique to choose a suitable duck breed for you is by thinking about the goal of raising ducks and gaining profit.
Once you are ready with your answer, you can go for the breed that best suits your goal. Here is a list of some most common duck breeds that you can consider while choosing the duck breed to raise.
Pekin Duck
- This is the most popular duck species.
- It is all white and has huge in size.
- This duck is famous because of its dual purposes.
- Pekin duck can be used for white eggs as well as good quality meat.
Campbell
- This duck is also known as the Khaki Campbell. This name derives from its tan-coloured body.
- Campbell is best if your goal is to make a profit from duck eggs.
- This duck breed can lay around 340 eggs in a year
Cayuga
- This is the only duck that originated in the USA near Cayuga Lake, New York.
- It is a medium-heavy duck breed that has slow growth.
- The Cayuga duck breed is known for its dual purposes. The first one is the eggs and the second one is the meat.
- This duck has black feathers that look green in a specific light, black feet, and black bills.
Muscovy
- This is an interesting breed from the southern hemisphere.
- Muscovy is commonly known as duck and is different from its relative duck family Mallard.
- This breed builds nests like normal ducks however also roosts like chickens at night.
- Muscovy is known for its delicious meat.
Rouen
- Rouen is a beautiful duck breed
- It can lay 3-5 eggs per week. Therefore, if your goal is to make money via duck eggs, then this is a good choice for you.
Mallards
- One unique thing about this duck breed is that it lays green eggs.
- Mallards are very talkative and energetic.
- This breed is usually raised for ornaments due to its beautiful looks.
7 Best Ways to Make Money With Ducks
1) Duck eggs
- Duck eggs are rapidly gaining recognition amongst bakers as it is excellent for baking.
- They are larger than bird eggs, extra nutritious and do not contain much water.
- They also are excellent for intake as the egg whites are full of protein.
- Selling duck eggs is one of the methods you can additionally make a profit from ducks.
2) Duck manure
- You must have possibly heard that hen poop is good manure. However, duck poop is genuinely better than hen poop.
- Duck poop carries the best ratio of Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium among all animal manures.
3) Duck meat
- Another method to make a profit from ducks is by selling them for meat.
- If you have a better breed and a bigger size, you may get extra money for the meat.
- If you have older ducks that could not lay that well, you must consider selling them for meat.
- You can also cut them yourself and sell frozen meat.
4) Ducklings
- If you have breeding ducks then you definitely are wealthy without knowing.
- You could make a profit by selling their ducklings once they hatch.
- Ducklings are in excessive demand and also you can’t be short of buyers.
- Eggs take less time to hatch. Therefore, you will constantly have ducklings to sell.
- You can use an incubator to hatch the duck eggs themselves.
5) Hatching eggs
- Some human beings prefer shopping for fertile duck eggs to buying ducklings.
- They purchase those eggs and place them into the incubator themselves to hatch.
- So when you have gloomy ducks, you may consider selling fertile eggs.
- Fertile eggs are usually in excessive demand so you would not be short of cash in case you venture into it.
6) Duck feathers
- If you preserve ducks then you definitely understand they moult yearly.
- This is a technique of losing old feathers for new ones.
- You could acquire those feathers and sell them.
- These feathers are utilised in making feather fans, pillows, blankets etc.
7) Laying ducks
- A duck starts laying eggs after around 4 months.
- You can even consider selling those.
- Duck farmers will need to shop for them, particularly during the mating season.
- If they’ve drakes, they’ll need to get extra laying ducks so they can get extra fertile eggs and ducklings.
- Therefore you can make a profit by selling your adult-laying ducks.
How to start Duck Farming Business?
Here are a few essential steps to starting a duck farming business:
- Size of the farm
The first thing to do is to establish the farm size for your duck farming business. Commercial operations differ in size. Whether it is a farm with 6 thousand ducks/ batch or to big farm with 50 thousand to 1 lac ducks/batch, you need to establish the size first.
- Selecting a duck breed
This is a very important stage. Depending upon your goal you need to select a duck breed.
- Capital investment
In this step, you need to calculate the capital investment and total cost for duck farming. It includes the cost of the land, the house, the cost of compliance, the cost of feeding, the cost of duckling purchase, the cost of medicine, etc.
- Expert counselling
Getting expert advice on financial, commercial, and legal issues is very important. It is very important if you have decided to run a farm within a contract with an established company.
Tips on starting a duck farming business
Shortlist your goal
When deciding to do duck farming, you need to define your goal for raising the ducks. You can raise your duck for egg production, meat selling, jewellery making, etc.
Some of the famous duck breeds include the Bali duck, ranger, Ancona duck, Khaki Campbell, call duck, Swedish blue duck, Rouen duck, welsh harlequin, Pekins, and Indian runner duck.
Get a proper place
Get a proper place for duck farming. If you already have a farm, you can mix both farms as ducks do not destroy vegetation and plants like chickens.
Check the eggs frequently
They lay eggs for an extended period of time than chickens and it is at night or morning. You must make sure that you check the farm every day to collect duck eggs so that ducks do not hatch them.
Moreover, they don’t need much management and care like other birds. Therefore, you can collect the eggs in the morning and do other activities the whole day.
Start your business with fewer ducklings
Start your business with fewer ducklings, it lays more eggs than chickens. Therefore, in less time, the duck can multiply and increase the population rapidly.
Duck mating
Duck mating is a very important step in your business. Mating sessions are very important in duck farming. These sessions will allow the male ducks to mate and the female ducks to produce eggs.
Selling duck products
You can sell these duck products in local or international markets and restaurants. Moreover, with word of mouth from friends and family, you can start gaining profit.
Final words
In conclusion, I would say that duck farming, if done correctly, can bring a lot of money for you. Starting duck farming doesn’t need a lot of capital as ducks are easy to care for and manage.
Additionally, other than keeping them as an income source, ducks can also make good pets. They are very helpful for farms. Male ducks have beautiful feathers that are very pleasant to our eyes and they can be a lot more beautiful when happy. Moreover, female ducks’ eggs and meat are very beneficial to our bodies.
I hope you enjoyed the article. I will be back soon with more interesting and informative pieces of writing. Till then, stay connected. Thank you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Ducks are very easy to raise even if you have a small area. This is because ducks are very social animals. Therefore, you need to raise at least 3 ducks together. Talking about female and male ducks, a complete group includes 3 females and 0 ducks, or 4 males or 5 females.
Duck farming is very profitable and easy to manage the business. Moreover, they can easily survive in swamps, marshy areas, and agricultural wastes. In fact, they can even survive in areas where there are no crops.
A duck house has a lower height however you can fit inside to keep it clean. You do not need to get perches as they do not roost like a chicken. However, you can help with providing straw for nesting and keeping the floor a little dry.
The standard quantity of ducks laying eggs per year is 7 to 9. Chickens usually slow down their egg-laying capacity by the 2nd or 3rd year. Therefore, according to a study, it is said that ducks are more profitable than chickens.