USA Duck Team Scattered-Site Hatchery

Commodities

Practices

Our research question is, "How can we get farmers in our region
to adopt more ducks?" Ducks are native to our region and are more
productive than chickens, which come from tropical jungle fowl.
However, farmers purchase chickens because this is what they know
or have always done. We are working with eight farms to produce
baby ducklings and then explore eight different methods for
marketing the poultry to the community surrounding their farms.
Each farm will be a node in a scattered site hatchery. We will
teach each farmer to overcome past biases and objections about
ducks. We will support our eight farms in choosing good quality
Heritage breed stock, support for hatching ducklings, and support
for marketing through different techniques. We will explore which
marketing technique is effective for moving the most ducklings
while producing the highest revenue for the producer. Our farms
will keep back the best quality ducklings to produce breeding
stock for the hatchery for the next generation. Producing local
poultry will solve the problem of baby birds dying in the mail
due to delays from the US Postal Service. Healthier genetics mean
lower inputs and more sustainability for meat and egg
production. 

USA Duck Team is a regional food system network of disadvantaged
duck farmers in Missouri and Kansas. We work with Heritage breed
Cayuga ducks as the best homesteader meat/egg crossover breed.
Ducks are more productive than chickens in most situations,
especially in wet regions, and are more heat tolerant and cold
tolerant and more compatible with gardening. Furthermore, ducks
resist the avian flu strains decimating the poultry and dairy
industry. We are promoting the adoption of a more sustainable
meat breed as an alternative to Cornish Cross chickens, which
rely heavily on shipped birds. Because the USPS has struggled to
deliver poultry alive due to shipping delays, this project will
explore and test the viability of a scattered site hatchery to
produce local poultry. Eight different farms will be receiving
incubators and hatchery management training. All eight farms use
good livestock management practices and sustainable
poultry-raising techniques. Most of our farms use "backyard
poultry" models, where the flock has a full unrestricted range of
a backyard or a sizeable free-range pen. Backyard models are more
sustainable for local small-scale production.
Our methods to support disadvantaged farmers include multiple
best-practices recommendations from the USDA. The Food Animal
Concerns Trust also funded our project to help support an
increase in incubation capacity. After four years, our network
has multiple farmers experienced in poultry keeping, incubation,
meat processing, and marketing. Many of our farmers are already
producing ducklings, duck eggs, and duck meat, and additional
sales would increase the sustainability of their operations. Many
of our network farmers are ready to step up, for example, moving
from Styrofoam incubators to cabinet incubators or from
hand-plucking to using a mechanical plucker. Many of the farmers
in our network are ready for additional support with marketing
and sales, and this is why we are building a website with
individual farm listings to increase capacity for local pickups.
The business model is a "scattered site" hatchery and "scattered
site" meat processing plant for local pickups. Small farming is
an accurate and sustainable model for the future. The meat
production model will be helping people use their USDA small
grower exemption, where they can legally process 1000 birds per
year on-site that they have raised. In this grant, we will buy
incubators and pluckers, and farmers can then use those assets to
generate additional revenue.
Each farm will use slightly different techniques to market and
sell its hatchlings. We will improve local meat production
capacity by purchasing pluckers and supporting meat processing
training under the USDA small grower exemption. USA Duck Team
will expand farmers' market access by building our website to
include farmers' listings for ducklings, duck eggs, duck meat,
and other value-added products. With more ducklings in the
network, our food system will be able to produce more meat, as
ducks only take eight weeks to brood out and can be legally
processed using the USDA small grower exemption. More backyard
producers of meat and eggs will increase local food capacity for
the community served.

Objectives
We are testing different marketing methods to sell and promote
ducklings. We will be testing farmers' markets, farm stands, art
events, Craigslist, Facebook groups, feed store contracts, feed
store events, and websites as sales strategies to connect local
buyers with local producers of ducklings. We will measure success
by the number of Cayuga ducklings sold on each scattered-site
farm and in our central headquarters farm. We will calculate the
revenue produced per duckling for each miniature hatchery. Our
breed promotion and customer training model will support the
adoption of more sustainable meat and egg production in our
region.