ZCZC
BSS-03
DUCK-FARMING-SUCCESS (with picture)
Duck farming promotes entrepreneurship in Rajshahi
RAJSHAHI, Sept 6, 2019 (BSS)- Duck farming has now been a reliable source
of promoting small-scale entrepreneurship in both rural and urban areas in
the region as many unemployed people become self-reliant in this field.
According to the sources concerned, duck farming has diversified aspects
of eradicating various social problems related to poverty, unemployment and
malnutrition in particular. In many areas, the duck rearing has started
contributing a lot towards mitigating the problems to some extent.
After the best uses of his personal innovations, Saidur Rahman, 48, of
Champakuri area under Bagmara Upazila in the district is now in a position of
making profit of Taka 1.20 lakh per month.
After collecting 35 chicks from Santaher Duck Breeding Center he started
the business around four years back. Now, he has around 1,000 ducks in his
farm.
Retired army personnel Saidur is now become enthusiastic about furthermore
expansion of his business in the days to come as his business is contributing
a lot to the society in many ways.
“I bring one-day-old duck chicks to rear them for four months till they
start giving eggs. Every day I have to spend around Tk 5,000 for their food,
medicine and my employee’s salary. The upazila livestock office supplies
vaccine,” he said.
He said he now gets 900 eggs daily on an average throughout the year and
makes profit around Tk 1.20 lakh per month.
“Saidur is an intelligent and hard working duck farmer and we provide him
with support like vaccine, advice etc. His effort has opened up a new horizon
of rearing ducks in the area,” said Upazila Livestock Officer Dr Atibur
Rahman.
Monwara Khatun, 43, a resident of Pirijpur village under Godagari upazila,
has been able to oust her poverty cycle after finding the way of a better
livelihood though self-employment.
She said ducks farming is less expensive, simple and commercially viable.
Earning money from duck rearing and a grocery shop has now become a
consistent source of income, which is gradually increasing due to rising
local demands.
Prof Dr Jalal Uddin Sarder of Department of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary
Science of Rajshahi University, said women, particularly the housewives, are
mostly involved in rearing ducks of indigenous species.
Ducks need less expensive, simple and non-elaborate housing facilities
resulting in very less cost for setting up commercial duck farming business.
They are very hardy bird and they need less care or management.
They can adopt themselves with almost all types of environmental
conditions. The ducks are mostly fed home-made feed in addition to what they
are deriving from scavenging facilities.
Most of the farmers provided rice polish, boiled rice and broken rice as
supplementary feed ingredients to ducks either singly or in combination.
High price and scarcity of feed during dry season were the major
constraints affecting duck production. Use of natural feed resources in an
increasing manner may help overcoming the feed problem.
Regular vaccination and the use of cost-effective balanced diets can have a
decisive effect on duck rearing. As a whole, there are great potentials for
an improvement of native duck production in the region by means of
nutritional and management engineering, Prof Jalal Sarder added.
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