Farming mallards in northern Vietnam

Not many farmers in northern Vietnam have been successful in raising mallards, a species of wild ducks, for meat in recent years by keeping them at large.

The wild ducks fly away most of the time and only return ‘home’ for food, regularly fed at least twice a day.

Two farmers in Bac Giang Province are now owning tens of thousands of these wild birds each that way.

The meat of the wild birds is delicious and favored in Vietnam so it is expensive by local standards, around VND250,000 (US$11) a kilogram on farms or VND600,000 ($27) a kilogram in restaurants.

At five months old, each adult mallard weighs from 0.8 to one kilogram.

Nguyen Dang Cuong, 37, is a famous farmer in Bac Giang now for getting his wild birds into the habit of returning to their farm at his will.

His farm measures 2.5 hectares and is located deeply in the rice fields of Dai Dong Thanh Commune of Thuan Thanh District.

From afar, visitors can hear permanent noisy cries of mallards, which do not sound different from those of domestic ducks.

A local told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper, “Cuong is cool because he can keep mallards staying with him.”

Cuong explained that he could keep the wild ducks from flying away by giving them food at strictly exact times to create a habit for them.

The main ingredients in the food are bran and duckweed mixed together. The birds are alternately fed up with industrial food for poultry.

“It costs me ten wheelbarrows of bran and duckweed a day to make food for the mallards,” Cuong said.

“I give them sufficient food, making them too lazy to fly to seek one elsewhere.

“Bran mixed with duckweed at a certain ratio helps make the meat of mallards tough and fat-free.”

Cuong said his farm has 40,000 mallards and only baby ducks and the adults ready for sale are kept in ponds covered with nets. The remainder are able to fly whenever they like.

To Quang Dan, 44, poses beside his mallard farm in Dong Phu Commune, Luc Nam District, Bac Giang Province. Photo: Tuoi Tre

“They prefer flying away on cool nights in herds of dozens,” he said.

“They just come to rice fields nearby for a while and then return’ home’,” he said, adding that raisers should never make mallards get panicked because they will fly away and never get back.

“I have been keeping mallards for seven years and have lost the feeling of worrying the birds won’t come back,” Cuong said.

The other farmer who is successful in keeping mallards is To Quang Dan, 44, in Dong Phu Commune of Luc Nam District.

Dan said his experience of keeping wild ducks for delicious and tough meat is to feed them bran, paddies, and duckweed.

“I followed a poultry-keeping course and was advised to cultivate a species of wild plants on my farm,” he said.

“Leaves of the plants are cooked with water for the birds to drink to prevent epidemics.”

Despite the current success with such a big herd of mallards, Cuong admitted it was not all easy work for him to start his business years ago.

He elaborated that he was treated to mallard meat in a party one of his friends threw in 2007, after which he asked the pal to help him buy 60 wild ducks to raise on his farm.

After several months of feeding them with great care, the number was halved. Two months later, some of them began laying eggs.

But none of them successfully hatched. After months of testing, the first herd of baby mallards hatched well.

The herd on his farm rose to 50, 100, and now 40,000 birds.

Currently Cuong supplies hundreds of mallards for meat a day to restaurants in nearby cities and Hanoi at an expensive price.

On his farm, a kilogram of mallard meat is priced at VND180,000-250,000 (US$8-11) and restaurants charge VND600,000 ($27) a kilogram to process the meat into dishes.

The prices are too high so it is hard for mallard meat to become a food popular with households, Cuong said.

“I will expand my farm to keep 100,000 wild ducks and increase productivity, and I hope that I can lower their prices by 2018,” he revealed.

In spite of its high prices, supply of mallard meat is still unable to meet demand from restaurants.

Eatery owners have had to send their staff to cover a long distance to buy wild ducks from farms.

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