Mixed golden apple snail and rice bran as feed for Mallard ducks

Feeds constitute the bulk of expenses in duck production. To reduce feed cost, raisers integrate ducks with rice farming. These are herded in rice paddies to avail fo natural feed resources like rice grains, insects, snails, among others. However, in this feeding management, protein intake of the animal is low and limited to available snails and insects in the rice fields. This therefore makes feed availability unpredictable during the production period. Although transporting the ducks to other herding locations is an option, this may cause additional constraints to them that could lead to low productivity. To address these constraints, ducks maybe confined and fed with golden apple snail and rice bran. Golden apple snail is a good protein source while rice bran is a high energy feedstuff. Furthermore, the utilization of golden apple snail can help farmers eliminate its destructive effect on the rice fields and totally stop dependence on chemical mulluscicides. To determine the effect of mixed golden apple snail (GAS) and rice bran (RB) on the production performance of brooding and growing Mallard ducks, Pasigian and Umaguing (NVSU) conducted a research in 2005, where the effects of three kinds of diets were compared: commercial rations (Diet 1), mixed ration of 1 GAS : 1 RB (Diet 2 and mixed ration of 1 GAS : 2 RB (Diet 3). Mallard ducks fed Diet 1 (commercial rations) had the highest body weight of 1515 g compared with ducks fed with mixed GAS-RB rations which produced 1425 g for Diet 2 and 1308.23 g for Diet 3. This was expected because commercial feeds were formulated to provide the ducks with the necessary nutrient required for their growth and development. The difference in the effects of Diet 2 and 3 showed that the nutrients present in golden apple snail were significantly better than rice bran. Ducks given Diet 1 consumed significantly lower amount of feeds (5.62 kg) than birds in Diets 2 (6.58 kg) and 3 (6.97 kg). This could be explained by the fact that commercial rations were formulated according to the nutrient requirement of birds, and provided the right amount of energy and protein the ducks need. Birds upon satisfying their energy requirements stop eating. Birds on Diet 2 tended to eat more to compensate for the deficiency of nutrients needed for growth and development. In terms of feed conversion ratio (FCR), birds in Diet 1 had significantly better value of 4.18 than ducks in Diets 2 and 3 with 5.26 and 6.63 FCR values, respectively. This meant that ducks fed with Diet 1 needed lesser amount of feed to convert this into kilogram body weight. Birds in Diet 2 incurred the lowest cost of feed per unit gain in weight that resulted in higher returns above feed cost. Based from the results, ducks in Diet 1 outperformed ducks fed Diets 2 and 3 in most of the production parameters measured. However, in terms of return above feed cost from the production of ready-to-lay ducks, Diet 2 gave P102.20 compared with Diet 1 (P44.80) and 3 (P87.48). Using 1:1 ratio of golden apple snail and rice bran as diets for brooding and growing Mallard ducks is more economical.