Meat Duck Questions

[whaleykale]

Hi all, I'm planning out a meat duck venture for this spring/summer and have a couple questions I'd love input on:

1. What do Pekin ducks usually weigh out to at 9 weeks? Live VS dressed weight? I realized I was doing some of my sale projections based on live weight but obviously there will be some loss of weight with processing - just not sure how much.
2. Is there significant difference between Jumbo and Grimaud Pekins? I've seen Jumbo obviously get bigger, but they're more expensive - are they worth it? I'm leaning towards getting Meyer's "hatchery choice" Pekins which are a mix of Grimaud and Jumbo, but I'd like to hear if it's worth investing in getting one or the other specifically.
3. Likewise - is it worth spending the money to get sexed ducklings? Are the hens going to be significantly smaller?
4. For those of you that sell duck meat, how do you price your ducks? Per animal or per lb (and how much)? How did you decide on your price?
5. For those of you that buy duck meat, what are you willing to pay? What's too much for you?
6. Finally - is it worth doing a batch of Muscovy? I've never tried them but I've heard their meat is amazing. It sounds like the hens will be quite a bit smaller, but if we can charge a bit more for them it might be worth it.

Thanks in advance for the help!

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Muscovy I believe is healthier, but less fatty. Not sure if lean duck meat taste worse than fatty though like beef can.

Pekin hens still get rather heavy. Mine was a pet so she wasn't butchered, but after a year, she was about 10 or so pounds.

 

[Quatie]

I just recently tried muscovy meat. I had to cull my male. The meat does taste really good. We tried it as like a stake and it reminds me of fillet minon but with a gamey taste. We roasted another part of him and I will now be disappointed in future pork pot roasts. I have had regular duck meat once and was not a fan of it.

The muscovy also have a lot of meat on their legs as well. The reason to get muscovy would be that the female will hatch out the ducklings and raise them. They are amazing parents. However they take longer to get to butchering weight.

 

[Ratchnick]

The pekins i buy at costco are about 4 lbs and are $3 a pound. Metzers blog has information on weights, feed conversion vs time ect. You loose about 40% weight when you butcher.

The different strains of pekin (like any duck) can be vastly different. If this is going to be a real thing you will want to hatch your own, so keep that in mind when selecting a strain.

I would not get sexed ducklings to start, as long as you don't go with moscovy. Also i wouldnt get more then a dozen for the first round.

I would stay away from scovies unless you buy them sexed. They fly and that means lots more work.

The problem with ducks is butchering, more specifically feathers. I butchered my first duck for thanksgiving last year and it took 4 hours, which was about what i was expecting. It was an older duck in the middle of winter so he had lots of feathers. A mechanical plucker followed by duck wax would probably be pretty quick.

 

[whaleykale]

The pekins i buy at costco are about 4 lbs and are $3 a pound. Metzers blog has information on weights, feed conversion vs time ect. You loose about 40% weight when you butcher.

The different strains of pekin (like any duck) can be vastly different. If this is going to be a real thing you will want to hatch your own, so keep that in mind when selecting a strain.

I would not get sexed ducklings to start, as long as you don't go with moscovy. Also i wouldnt get more then a dozen for the first round.

I would stay away from scovies unless you buy them sexed. They fly and that means lots more work.

The problem with ducks is butchering, more specifically feathers. I butchered my first duck for thanksgiving last year and it took 4 hours, which was about what i was expecting. It was an older duck in the middle of winter so he had lots of feathers. A mechanical plucker followed by duck wax would probably be pretty quick.

Thanks for the input! I have raised ducks before and done a bit of processing, just not in a focused for-sale-project and I wasn't specifically raising meat birds, so I'm less sure of their characteristics (I was given some Khaki Campbell chicks by a friend... and then they all turned out to be drakes). We're definitely planning on renting a plucker since plucking was a pain last time.

If we did a muscovy batch would you say we should get sexed males then (for meat)?

 

[SolarDuck]

Thanks for the input! I have raised ducks before and done a bit of processing, just not in a focused for-sale-project and I wasn't specifically raising meat birds, so I'm less sure of their characteristics (I was given some Khaki Campbell chicks by a friend... and then they all turned out to be drakes). We're definitely planning on renting a plucker since plucking was a pain last time.

If we did a muscovy batch would you say we should get sexed males then (for meat)?

Most hatcheries don't sex Muscovy, I think a few do if you order 15+ of them. Keep in mind Muscovy take much longer to reach Harvesting weight, as it takes like 7 weeks with Pekin but up to 20 weeks with Muscovy because they grow much slower, and the feed cost will be more because Muscovy eat much more while they grow.

 

[Ratchnick]

Thanks for the input! I have raised ducks before and done a bit of processing, just not in a focused for-sale-project and I wasn't specifically raising meat birds, so I'm less sure of their characteristics (I was given some Khaki Campbell chicks by a friend... and then they all turned out to be drakes). We're definitely planning on renting a plucker since plucking was a pain last time.

If we did a muscovy batch would you say we should get sexed males then (for meat)?

You could get sexed males to just grow out, or if you have land you could free range them in a fenced pasture. The hens will hatch their own chicks and they breed like rabbits. You would need to keep their wings cliped way back so they can't jump the fence.

 

[whaleykale]

Most hatcheries don't sex Muscovy, I think a few do if you order 15+ of them. Keep in mind Muscovy take much longer to reach Harvesting weight, as it takes like 7 weeks with Pekin but up to 20 weeks with Muscovy because they grow much slower, and the feed cost will be more because Muscovy eat much more while they grow.

Yeah, after doing some looking around I realized most seem to do straight runs only. Oh well!

 

[nao57]

People have shown that pekins and muscovy can both be fairly even with pros and cons, leading over the other breeds in terms of meat.

Also, they will have consistent better meat conversation rates up until about 3 months. So you don't have to worry about the feed conversion dropping yet at 9 weeks. You could go a bit further than that.

As far as to sex or not, the hatcheries always sell the males in a group lower for any poultry. So you can just ask for males. And this is visible with most hatcheries. When you go in to order it will let you choose, male, female, or straight run. There are advantages to each method, so neither is inferior. If you do meat birds you would always want to go with males only. But some people also like to do the straight run and keep the hens and cook the fatties (males) after they get enough weight.

Some people think the muscovies make good moms, and do so as a side thing so they can do their own operation once they have enough mature hens...but it would mean winter carry over costs. (But pekins are not inferior to muscovy.)

Generally in terms of costs per bird, people have been silly with wanting something more exotic. So the exotic birds will cost more but plain birds like pekins will be super cheap. This is ironic because they are very very good birds.

Generally hens are always smaller than drakes with ducks. But I don't know if this is true for geese or not.

I wouldn't necessarily pay extra for jumbo or special types myself. But that depends also on if you plan to rebreed yourself and a lot of other factors. You can find pekin ducklings very cheap.

As far as price to sell...this is tricky. People are just so programmed and not thrifty. They don't realize they are passing opportunities by. In theory you should be able to set the price below what they'd already be paying for cannibal burgers (impossible foods, meatless burger meat, lab grown meat etc), and cheaper than ground beef and it should be very worth it. But because people are so programmed its hard to say. An example of this is that in a lot of states the ratio of chickens to ducks in people raising their own poultry is like 20 to 1. But that doesn't make sense when you consider that ducks are as good as chickens in most evaluation traits and variables... and ducks even lead over chickens in most of those areas.... yet people are still doing chickens. This means people are very programmed and want to stay with what they know about. This is even more silly because there are more food allergy issues with chickens than ducks by far. And this is growing a lot for.... a lot of reasons which would take a long time to explain.

The basic nutshell truth is that if you do ducks you'll have to do more marketing. But the product should excel and be better. Duck meat does sell more than chicken meat in dollar price also. But there's just not as many users. But some cultural groups are into ducks more than European descended cultures, like in Asia, they use more duck meat than we do.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

An example of this is that in a lot of states the ratio of chickens to ducks in people raising their own poultry is like 20 to 1. But that doesn't make sense when you consider that ducks are as good as chickens in most evaluation traits and variables... and ducks even lead over chickens in most of those areas.... yet people are still doing chickens.

I do want to point out though that a big reason for chickens over ducks is that they don't need places to wise in and just theoretically don't make nearly as much mud.