A fundamental point in the breeding of ducks is indicators of their meat productivity, on which the profitability of the farm depends. Crosses (crosses of breeds of birds) are created to improve product quality and pace of weight gain. One of these hybrid varieties is the old 53 broiler duck.

Breed description

Star 53, known as the French white duck, is the result of breeding the well-known Peking duck and was bred in France by Grimaud Frerers to obtainaboutlighter weight gain in a short time.

This duck line is characterized by an intense metabolism (which is facilitated by a body temperature of 42 ° C), high digestibility of nutrients and the predominance of muscle mass over fat.

The percentage of fat in old 53 is about 15%, which makes its meat suitable for a dietary table. You can find large and medium varieties of cross, they differ only in size.

Appearance

For the uninitiated, these birds are more similar in appearance to geese: the same white, with a large head and an orange beak. You can distinguish them by a shorter neck. For old 53 are characteristic:

• elongated torso;
• broad, strong chest (fillet yield is 31%);
• powerful back;
• short paws;
• possible cream or light yellow shimmer of plumage;
• small neat tail.

What is different from mullards

Moulard is also a French meat cross - the result of crossing Peking and musk ducks. In addition to external differences (the mullard has a black spot on his head) from the old 53, they also differ:

• higher fat content of meat (25%);
• less consumption of greens and more - feed (as a result of which it is more profitable to keep old 53);
• larger maximum dimensions (up to 7 kg);
• less active growth;
• calm and balanced disposition.

Weight gain table by week

With proper care and feeding, old 53 grows like yeast (by the way, yeast can and should be gradually included in the diet of birds). At birth, the weight of the duckling is about 52 g. The table below shows the average growth rates of live weight of ducks by week.

These figures were obtained in laboratory conditions and may differ slightly (to a lesser extent) when breeding ducks in a private household.

When they start to rush

Duck eggs are quite edible, very nutritious and in some countries (Japan, China) are considered a real delicacy. However, not everyone, however, likes their specific taste, high calorie content and viscous consistency, so this is an amateur product.The old 53 ducks begin to rush at 6 months old and are a very egg-laying breed (capable of producing up to 280 eggs per year). But every farmer must decide from the very beginning whether he will leave hens, because during and after molting (at 3 months):

• weight gain stops;
• feed consumption is increasing;
• on the carcass appear the so-called "blocks" (growths), which are difficult to remove;
• meat becomes harsh and greasy.

Important! Fats prevail in duck eggs; therefore, their use is not recommended for children under 6 years old and overweight people. In addition, raw duck eggs cannot be eaten by anyone because of the high risk of intestinal infection.

Advantages and disadvantages

As a result of selection, Star 53 retained all the positive qualities of its Chinese ancestor, reinforcing the most important ones. However, some disadvantages of the Peking duck are also present in the cross considered by us.

• The advantages of old 53 include:
• fast growth;
• unpretentiousness;
• frost tolerance;
• high yield (especially breast) and low fat content of meat;
• high egg production and a large unit weight;
• nice appearance.

• Negative content of the representatives of this cross:
• intolerance to dampness;
• fussiness, susceptibility to panic and screaming (must be kept in a calm, isolated place, away from noise);
• high price of hatching eggs;
• the difficulty of buying a real breed is old 53 (unscrupulous sellers often sell other hybrids under this name).

Breeding

Hatching eggs should only be purchased at facilities with poultry documents and certificates. Despite the higher price, the likelihood of acquiring real old 53 will be higher. You need to store eggs in a home incubator, turning them several times a day, at a temperature of +8 ... + 13 ° C and humidity not more than 75%. Usually, the growth process in an incubator takes 25–27 days. During this time, you need to make sure that everything is ready for the maintenance and care of future ducklings.

Maintenance and care

Like all ducks, the old 53 is undemanding to the conditions of detention and picky about feeding. But, like any pet, they still need regular care and compliance with certain rules.

Room requirements

We need two separate rooms for ducklings and older individuals. You can’t keep them together, adult birds can harm newborns. The house should be kept dry. Particular attention should be paid to litter, as the old 53 does not tolerate dampness and excessive humidity even more than other ducks.

And, taking into account the active metabolic processes and the accelerated passage of feed through the intestines, waste from the breed in question is always a large amount.Permanent litter leads to injuries of duck legs and poultry diseases due to dampness. It is best to keep ducks on the mesh floor with special grooves underneath it (to collect litter). It is proved that when using a mesh floor, the safety of ducklings and the intensity of their growth increase.

As with any broiler, the room should not be made too spacious, but a large crowding negatively affects the state of the old 53, they become fussy and noisy, which cannot but affect their development and growth. In this regard, the size of the house is calculated on the basis of 1 m² for 2-3 ducks.

For old 53 it is typical to spend some time on free grazing, eating green grass, so you need to prepare safe pens or areas on the shore of the reservoir.

Did you know? The vision of ducks is sharper than that of humans. Thanks to the lateral position of the eyes, the view in birds is almost 360 °. In addition, they have a third eyelid, which serves as a feathery kind of points for diving.

Temperature and ventilation

The house should be warm enough, the temperature should not be lower than +15 ° C. Focus on this issue should be the behavior of ducks. If the birds breathe heavily and become lethargic, perhaps you should somehow lower the temperature.

If the ducks are knocked together in tight flocks, they are probably cold. To remove excess heat and toxic gases, ventilation is needed (air inlets and exhaust fans). But we must not forget about the inadmissibility of drafts, especially for newborn ducklings.

Lighting

In the first week of life, a high level of illumination (more than 20 lux) is maintained to stimulate food intake and reduce limb problems. Then the periods in the dark are lengthened in order to reduce energy consumption and increase the mass of ducks.

Cell content

In small farms, the cage is not an optimal place for keeping old 53 (except for newborns) because of the dislike for dampness, drafts and desire for walking for the consumption of succulent feeds already noted above. Nevertheless, the method of keeping in cages with a certainly mesh floor is often used in large poultry farms.

It is believed that this contributes to the rapid mass gain. In small poultry complexes, it will be preferable to place ducks in lightweight type houses (stationary "camps"), assembled from wooden or metal elements.

Important! Broilers are not fed potatoes and kitchen waste. Such a high-carb diet leads to a gain in fat mass and reduces the quality of meat products.

What to feed for weight gain

With such a high intensive growth and rapid metabolism as in old 53, food should always enter the reach zone as the intestines empty (every 4 hours in chicks, 3-4 times a day in grown birds). The basis of the diet is high-quality compound feed or grain combined with wet feed.Feed can be prepared by yourself, mixing corn and sowing flour of coarse grinding in the proportions of 1: 2 and adding greens to them (clover, blanched nettle, dandelion stalks). Care must be taken to always have clean water in the drinking bowl. As a mineral supplement, it is recommended to include shellfish and chalk in the diet.

When to score

As can be seen from the table above, the old 53 is ready for slaughter on the 45th day, when their weight crosses the mark of 3 kg. In any case, if the owner is not going to leave ducks for the production of egg products, you need to kill the birds up to 56 days. It is then that they begin to molt (a process involving large energy costs, baboutexcessive feed intake, possible loss of body weight).

Did you know? Ducks love to be in the rain. This is due to their bathing style, when trickles of water rise in the air. If you need to wash the birds, it is best to do it from a hose with a shower head or just let them out in the rain.

Growing ducklings

The care of ducklings, as a particularly vulnerable category of poultry, has its own nuances, which the farmer must remember in order to prevent the death of only hatched chicks.

Care and maintenance

After hatching, the ducklings are planted in special trays in the incubator so that the newborns dry out, and then transferred to a brooder cage, in which the temperature should be kept at +30 ° C for the first week (gradually lowering) and round-the-clock lighting should be provided for the development of the skeleton and muscle mass. By three weeks, ducklings can be transferred to an adult house.Before reaching 25 days, the chicks should not be allowed to enter the reservoirs, at this age they still can not swim because of the insufficiently functioning coccygeal gland.

Nutrition

The process of feeding newborns involves adaptation to the consumption of large amounts of food. It is important that a sufficient amount of protein is supplied with food, therefore, in addition to starting granular feed, crushed boiled eggs and low-fat cottage cheese are included in the diet.

In the first weeks, ducklings are fed frequently, 7–8 times a day. From the third day they accustom to green grass, making sure that there is no intestinal upset. Contrary to popular belief, cow milk should not be given until it reaches 10 days of age, as it is a difficult product to digest. Feed consumption varies depending on age, starting from 100 g per day and approaching the level of 250-300 g at the time of slaughter.

Star 53 is one of the most popular duck crosses in the world due to its high growth rates, high yield of tasty and low-fat meat products and easy care. The most important thing in growing these broilers is to purchase quality hatching eggs and not save on feed.