After being brought up on a dairy farm, dairy farming himself and negotiating dairy grazing contracts for many years, Paul Knudsen took on a new challenge in 2011 and turned his hand to the niche business of duck farming near Matamata.
“The 34ha property had an existing duck business growing meat birds and 70 dairy cows, milked once a day through a 12ASHB shed,” Knudsen said.
“I stopped milking in 2018, and switched to grazing dairy heifers.”
The farm has three growing sheds set up to continually accommodate six age groups.
“The shed’s awning sides remain open daily for ventilation as the growing sheds are not temperature or humidity controlled due to their low stocking rate compared to chickens.”
Knudsen provides freshwater pumped to the sheds from an underground spring system on the farm.
The ducklings drink from autofill bell feeders, but the older ducks have autofill water troughs.
“Ducks drink a lot of water and use it to clean themselves,” he said.
“We test our water supply for contaminants regularly.”
Shed hygiene is paramount to duck health and growth.
The ducks are raised on wood shavings and all sheds get a top-up daily.
The brood rooms are cleaned out and sprayed with sanitiser before the next batch of day-old ducklings arrive.
“At nine-week intervals, we clean out that shed completely, spray it with sanitiser and sprinkle hydrated lime around the edges which acts as a steriliser, before laying new shavings.”
The used shavings (duck litter) are picked up by two neighbours for use as fertiliser on their farms.
Duck and poultry farms use large amounts of wood shavings from wood processing.
With the building industry slowing down and the mills directing their shavings to make wood pellets or to burn them themselves to meet sustainability goals, the farming industry is finding it harder to source shavings.
“We expect shortages around calving and lambing times, but this season has been particularly difficult as we require 100cu m each week,” Knudsen said.
He remembered watching a rural TV programme some years ago that discussed the merits of miscanthus use on turkey farms in the United States.
A member of the grass family poaceae, miscanthus is grown from a sterile rhizome and will never seed or spread.
“I started googling, found Miscanthus New Zealand and approached them. I was able to locate a supplier and brought in some bales.”
Knudsen hired a harvester and hand-fed the bales through, ending up with a more manageable straw-like product.
“I trialled it by using shavings down one side of the sheds and miscanthus on the other. It’s interesting because the ducks actually prefer the miscanthus.”
His initial feedback is that miscanthus is much drier and absorbs ammonia really well, but is harder to spread in the sheds.
The farm is one of five contracted to Quack A Duck in Cambridge, which also manages its own egg production farm and hatching facility that supplies the growers.
Quack A Duck business manager Matthew Houston explained there was an established local market for duck products and an export business into the Pacific, Middle East, Philippines, and Japan.
“The business model is simple, with good cashflow as ducks leave the farms weekly, and is relatively easy for someone with livestock experience.”