Who would've thought it would be so hard to get some ducks? There was just a local ad today for $1.50 Muscovy ducklings. This is of course is no help since we're on the opposite side of the country.
Thank you Ron!! Nice seeing you again btw.I think your feed is fine. For production, feed conversion and getting the most growth for the money spent, levels of proteins in the formulation makes a difference. For the broilers, a ration that looks like the middle column should be best:
Some discussion from the study:
Thats actually how i got half my muscovy, shipped eggs and my bresse, reese barred rock, crested cream legbar, polish, d'anver, d'uccle, sizzle, seabright, black java, mottled java, etc lol. Out of all the shipments i've only had two that came out bad, even the shipment with 4 cracked eggs in the box still had a 50% hatch rate. i do however understand not wanting shipped eggs, i would rather all mine came locally too.misfitmorgan answered the questions as well as anyone could!
@misfitmorgan Thanks but I would never opt to buy or even receive free eggs to hatch. Too much left to the caprice of the USPS.
i agree as well i definately could have worded it more clearly to or mentioned they still need water.
They are produced for restaurants actually on larger farms 500-1000 birds, which is small scale when your talking commercial meat production but they are actually gaining popularity for their very lean meat and unique flavor. They also produce a lot of eggs and will hatch out up to 24 ducklings at a time if left alone. The pekin outweigh them in ease of raising, no flight, butcher at 65 days...its much like why do we eat corn X and not cornish rocks...ease of raising and butcher at a very young age even though older chickens taste better. Interestingly enough did anyone know that the U.S. Government was trying to decide on promoting chicken or rabbit as a "main" meat source and decided on chicken because it was easier for the homecook to butcher themselves....even though back then chickens took way longer to raise to butcher weight then rabbits and you dont have to pluck rabbits. Anyhow back to pekin, pekin is also a very popular duck because it has been eaten for so long, some of the earliest recorded peking duck made in china was somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 A.D. and started being farmed in china in roughly 900 A.D. The actual pekin ducks we have in the U.S. came from china in the 1870's...now compare that to the "lowly" muscovy, true wild muscovy are native to the americas and we raised by native americans long before europeans set foot here as a food source. So i guess the answer is basically...why do we eat beef instead of venison or bison, why do we eat chicken instead of pheasant.....during the earlier U.S. history caucasions did not want to eat what indians ate, they were superior and should eat british food, or french, etc. Basically the draw of some foreign "rare" duck cooked in a foreign style made pekin ducks popular. We did not limit the meat types we eat in the U.S. down to the big 3 until after the 1950's
We get it from a local mill, a big mill serves 4 counties. It is marked as 16% protein textured poultry feed. Chick starter pen pals 18% CP, we tried meat maker(21%CP) they started pooping blood, local game feed is 18%, local fryer is 22%, local broiler is 21%, pen pals layer is 16%
Muscovy females are smaller then males but the "smaller" is about the size of a pekin drake, pekin drakes are also quite a bit larger then females. Wild type muscovy drakes are about twice the size of a hen, production muscovy do not have as large of a size difference maybe 2/3s the size of the drakes. Ducks will interbred on their own if raised together, muscovy crossed to any mallard is a mule duck and they are not all sterile but most are, they do have testes they just dont have sperm. i have never heard of caponizing ducks so i have no idea what that would be called, i'm not to sure you can make duck capons, they have very fragile thin rib cages that would probly break in the caponizing process. I'm also not sure there is a need to capon them since most ducks are processed before sexual maturity anyhow.
That's me. The listings are down now because of the 4-5 week wait.
On this site is where I got part of my information about the Muscovies being a major player in the commercial duck industry. It's clearly used to get folks to buy their ducks but I really don't know how much truth there is in it.
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DESCRIPTION
Domesticated in Europe, White Muscovy ducks were originally discovered in Brazil and are known for their intelligence and love of flight. Used primarily for meat production, the White Muscovy duck makes up 90% of commercially produced duck meat. We've improved our White Muscovies through natural selection, producing birds that grow up to 50% larger than other Muscovies. One of our male White Muscovy ducklings can grow to 12lbs in just 12 weeks. The meat from our ducks is less greasy and contains less fat than other ducks".
Clipping the feathers on the wings is an option....however they would need to be clipped often. I do not but some people who produce musocvy for meat pinion the wing/s when their a day or two old.
