Home ›› 04 Sep 2022 ›› Nation
Ashraful Islam has become an icon in his locality in terms of attaining economic emancipation side by side with boosting his level of confidence through duck farming for the last couple of years.
A resident of Buzrukula village in Bagmara Upazila of the district, he has around 1,500 ducks, including around 1,000 egg-laying ones, on his farm at present generating the path of earning around Tk 15 lakh yearly on an average.
He is selling eggs at Tk 10.50 per piece from his farm regularly, saying the demand for duck-egg has enhanced to a greater extent at present. In the wholesale markets, the egg is being sold at Tk 11-14 per piece according to size.
“I launched the venture with 100 cambel species duckling when I was a first-year honours student in 2019,” said Islam, adding that he’s increasing the duck population gradually since then.
“I bring one-day-old ducklings 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 vaccines,” he said.
He said he now gets 900 eggs daily on an average throughout the year and makes a profit of around Tk 1.35 lakh per month.
Currently, a fourth-year student in the department of political science at Mohanpur Government Degree College, he has built the largest farm in the area inspiring many of the other villagers to follow the potential way.
Rubel Islam, 35, who used to work as a labourer, has now become financially solvent through duck farming contributing to society in many ways.
A resident of Bakshimoil village under Mohanpur Upazila, he began the venture with around 300 ducklings. At present, he sells 300 to 350 eggs a day on average besides selling ducks in wholesale markets and makes a profit of Tk 20,000-25,000 per month.
“I couldn’t get the scopes of institutional learning due to poverty that forced me to work as a labourer on other’s land,” said Rubel Islam, adding that he has overcome that.
Upazila Livestock Officer Dr Mahbubur Rahman said apart from Ashraful and Rubel many others have found self-reliance through duck farming.
“We are providing training, technical and other consultation services to the farmers in this field,” he added.
Ducks need less expensive, simple and non-elaborate housing facilities resulting in very less cost for setting up commercial duck farming businesses. They are very hardy birds and they need less care or management.
They can adapt to almost all types of environmental conditions. The ducks are mostly fed homemade 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.
Prof Dr Jalal Uddin Sarder, Dean of the Animal and Veterinary Science Faculty of Rajshahi University, said duck farming has diversified aspects of eradicating various social problems related to poverty, unemployment and malnutrition in particular.
Duck rearing has been contributing a lot towards mitigating the problems related to livelihoods as women, particularly housewives, are mostly involved in rearing ducks of indigenous species.
Prof Jalal Sarder opined that 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.
The use of natural feed resources in an increasing manner may help overcome the existing feed problem.
Regular vaccination and the use of cost-effective balanced diets can have a decisive effect on duck rearing.
As a whole, there is great potential for an improvement of native duck production in the region by means of nutrition and management, Prof Sarder added.
