Comparative study on growth and carcass characteristics of three genotypes of duck for establishing a baseline population towards a meat type duck variety

Abstract

Poultry meat and egg have a major contribution in human nutrition all over the world. Ducks in terms of meat and egg production occupy an important position next to chicken farming in Bangladesh. Present study was conducted to establish a baseline population forwarding a meat type duck variety in Bangladesh. For this novel purpose, day-old ducklings (n=60 each) of commercial three duck breeds Pekin (PK), Deshi Black (DB), and Nageswari (NG) were selected with three replications of 20 birds each were utilized to the study of ten weeks of rearing under intensive management system. All birds were supplied the same feed, vaccine, light, temperature with sufficient clean drinking water. During this period different parameters like their total body weight, body weight gain, feed conversion ratio (FCR), mortality and carcass characteristics were recorded for all the breeds. The results showed that final body weight (BW), Live weight gain (LWG) and carcass parameters are significantly (p<0.05) higher in PK compare to DB and NG, with significantly (p<0.05) lower FCR and mortality rate comparing with other two breeds. Although there is no significant (p<0.05) difference between DB and NG in case of FCR but other parameters like BW and LWG with carcass parameters DB is significantly (p<0.05) higher than NG with the inverse result in case of mortality. From this study it may concluded that PK and DB are better than NG in the sense of selection for next generation breeding.