Taiwan Today

The Chinese have never embraced the Western fairy tale image of the ugly duckling, but have been traditional lovers of the duck, as an attractive element in art as well as on the table. The delectable fowl appears in art, always rotund and prime, a thing of beauty encompassing realms of both domestic and natural contentment. However, a duck in any situation is never too far from the pot.

Still, duck raising on Taiwan was, till the past ten years, an agricultural sideline. Now, however, it is a very special­ized agricultural industry. The Duck Research Center at Ilan on the island's northeast coast has been largely responsi­ble for this development. As a matter of fact, Dr. Tai Chien, director of the Center, an arm of the Taiwan Livestock Research Institute, concluding a recent report on the Center's activities, points out that Taiwan is a world leader in duck research.

The ducks themselves are integral to the scenic delights or Taiwan's countryside—living dashes of white flecked onto vivid green scapes, the enormous white flocks indicating also, the recent as­cendancy of the White Tsaiya duck over the native Brown Tsaiya. Ranging along the river banks or the environs or artifi­cial ponds, they seem to have an idyllic, if short existence, warranting spasms of envy from their caged cousins, the chickens.

Taiwan's varied poultry industry saw an early establishment or chicken raising in the period or rural reconstruction—as an economic leader, leaving ducks a very poor second. Recently, geese too have been increasing in popularity, but their anarchic gaggles are limiting, defying man's intent of intensive raising. The duck on the other hand, continues to gain rapidly in importance as a result of the impact of recent research, which has unlocked doors of genetic and manage­ment potential for intensive raising.

There is one unique flock or ducks at the Duck Research Center which has, for five generations been deprived of the small joys of foraging and paddling, a situation of great portent for the industry. Under experimental conditions set up for the purpose of collecting data for genetic studies, it has become evident that their tiered cage system has great commercial potential for high-grade egg laying ducks, an experimental objective that has been the composite goal of Re­search Center Director Dr. Tai Chien, his wire and head of the genetics department, Dr. Liu Rei-jen, and head of the nutrition department Chen Pao-chi.

One of the early achievements of the Center (it was established in 1968) was the breeding of the "Mule" duck for commercial meat production. The 1978 report of the Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (JCCR) cited this as a "spectacular achievement" in poultry breeding, resulting in remarkable carcass quality and growth rate. Initial breeding resulted in a bird with predominantly white plumage, which offers a vast hand­ling improvement over the common Brown Tsaiya native duck, whose black or brown feathers, especially the black pin feathers—those small ones which cannot be readily removed by a rumbler or even by careful plucking-detract from the attractiveness of the table bird.

The "Mule" duck was the product or a three-way genetic cross—the genes of three very different breeds shape the new hybrid. In the case of the "Mule," there were certain morphological differences between the parent lines that necessitated human intervention. To breed it, a cross was first made between the native Brown Tsaiya hen and the Pekin drake, resulting in what is known to Taiwan breeders as the Kaiya duck, an improved variety The Brown Tsaiya, a light, rangy, good egg laying bird, has been the basis of Taiwan's duck egg supply. The white Pekin duck, which has long been known as a dual purpose bird, brought special value to this cross for its heavy carcass and fast growth rate. A second cross used the Kaiya as dam and a prime meat bird, the Muscovy, as drake. Though the latter is a slow grower, it is valued for its lean meat cuts-of a quality far superior to the fatty Pekin breed.

The early "Mule" ducks were a Tsaiya and Muscovy cross; the Pekin genes were added in later experiments to improve the growth rate. Morphological peculiarities had to be overcome initially by manual assistance in mating the Muscovy drake to the Tsaiya and later the Kaiya hen, both of which couplings gave issue to mules, or intergeneric hybrid progeny. This obviously inefficient mating procedure has been replaced by techniques or artificial insemination, now commonplace on Taiwan's breeding farms as a result of agricultural extension work. So it is Taiwan's integrated program of research and extension work that has enabled the "Mule" duck to become predominant among the island's cumulative meatbird flock of over three million.

This spectacular achievement may in the future, however, be seen as only the thin edge or the wedge in terms of the real potential of intensive duck breeding in Taiwan.

The "Mule" in ideal form, for exam­ple, should be pure white to fulfill market preferences, and to this end, the Duck Research Center has now produced a pure White Tsaiya for the maternal parent line towards the breeding of an ideal market "Mule." Fixing the pure white plumage is a culmination of work spanning seventeen years, involving a mass selection program begun on a closed flock of 800 white birds collected from around the island. It was only after 1979, with construction of a proper understanding of genetic functions controll­ing the white plumage, that a more exact selection program could be evolved. It was essential to arrive at White Tsaiya ducks with no significant expense to the reproductive abilities of the original Brown Tsaiya.

Dr. Liu Rei-jen is now piloting a breeding program based on individual selection, continuing efforts for white plumage, but also concentrating on egg production and feeding efficiency. Using the White Tsaiya dam, the percentage of full white-plumage "Mules" from the three-way cross has improved from 3.6 to 32.8 percent. Since color is controlled by multiple alleles, genetic factors which each contribute a little to the final color, the color of the remaining 67.2 percent is variable, but with a corresponding increase in white plumage throughout the range. An individual selection program is an ideal way to further improve this percentage, while at the same time main­taining a check against decreasing repro­ductive ability. It is, however, a painstaking procedure made practicable only by the introduction of the same cage-layer system applied to egg laying chickens.

All ducks at the Center are identified by an individual numbering system through hole marks in the webs of their feet. Each egg from the dams in the selec­tion program is marked and recorded so that the ducklings can be marked on hatching. The system makes possible a very accurate record system for computer data analysis.

The gains from the Center's meticulous work are already significant in material terms. The successful breeding of the White Tsaiya duck has revolutionized the duck industry in Taiwan, opening a new Southeast Asian export market for 24-day-old incubated duckling embryos. The better table appeal of the "Mule" duck has boosted exports to 3D million 24-day-old embryos per year—a very convenient export, since the embryo by the 24-day stage is already capable of producing heat to support its life functions, provided it is well insulated in shipping. In Singapore, Hongkong, and Thailand, the eggs are hatched and the ducks are raised to a table weight of about 2.6 kilos in ten weeks. The White Tsaiya now adds its feathery appeal, selling at a premium to the thriving down industry.

Dr. Tai Chien finds prime among the satisfactions of his seven years at the Center, the fact that the researchers' diverse projects and the extension effort have melded so well into a team opera­tion. The cage housing utilized by the genetics department is an example: It also created an ideal situation for controlled conditions for complementary re­search by the Nutrition Department. In addition to enabling cooperation in assessing feed efficiency, it helped in work­ing out new management possibilities for laying ducks.

The cage system requires and is still undergoing perfection efforts in its adaptation for the ducks-the slope of the floors and shaping of feeders and water­ing systems all require specific attention. Dr. Tai, pointing out the great advantage of a system providing clean eggs ready for market, notes that the five genera­tions of ducks already raised in this way have produced well enough—with good layers producing 230 eggs per year—to justify recommendation of the system to commercial farms.

Duck eggs have always been an im­portant food item in China; in today's Taiwan their production is becoming a very specialized job, though the Brown Tsaiya duck is still the chief bird in Taiwan's egg laying flock of more than 3,400,000. These birds lay for two or even three years before their production drops and they, themselves, go to the table.

Most of the duck eggs are prepared as salted eggs, which with rice porridge are the "eggs and bacon" of the Chinese breakfast table. Salted eggs are tradition­ally prepared by coating the eggs in a salt-mud mixture for 25 days, or in a modern process, a 30 percent brine solution is substituted. The duck egg and salt com­bine into an egg food with a very strong taste, definitely to be "acquired."

We looked on as nutritionist Chen Pao-chi introduced a group of seven skeptical farmers to the layer cage setup. They were obviously going to take some convincing before making such alterations down on the farm. The Duck Re­search Center's extension work focuses mainly on such management practices, leaving disease problems and such to other institutions. Frequent training pro­grams and seminars for farmers and other members of the industry are the main extension tools. The Nutrition Department also makes routine analysis checks on commercial feeds for the guid­ance of farmers.

Another important extension effort complements the activity of breeding farms around the island; 70,000 of the annual supply of Kaiya ducklings are from the center's own stock, reaching the breeding farms through the hatcher­ies in a process in general use here, but quite unique to Taiwan. The hatcheries are independent operations that receive the eggs on behalf of the ultimate-recipient breeding farms. A farm is obliged to pay for only 70 percent of the eggs delivered by the supplier as a hedge against infertility. On its part, the hatchery is only obliged to deliver 70 percent of the ducklings to the breeder. Extras are bonanza, sold to the breeder at an agreed basic price, or elsewhere if a higher price is available.

Basic to the success achieved with the "Mule" duck has been the extension of artificial insemination techniques to the 250-odd island breeding farms, most of which are involved in the exacting work of providing Kaiya ducks as breeding stock for the production of "Mules" for the raising farms.

The Duck Research Center's knowl­edge and skills, having been propagated throughout Taiwan, are now being taken further afield by a former visiting re­ search fellow from France, Dr. Rouvier. H.H. Huang of the government's Council for Agricultural Production and Devel­opment was, at the time of this writing, visiting France at Dr. Rouvier's request for discussions with the French National Institute for Agricultural Research on the possibility of technical cooperation with France for the development of a Gallic "Mule" duck. There have been problems encountered with artificial insemination in this program.

The perfection of techniques for frozen semen in the course of duck breeding is one of the latest research ef­forts at the Center. Frozen semen ena­bles desirable genes to be stockpiled over long periods and used over many generations. It also enables convenient means of transporting the genes, both lo­cally in hot seasons and internationally. Dr. Liu reports that Pekin drake semen has shown good potential for frozen stor­age, proving out in a conception rate of 62 percent after insemination of Tsaiya dams. With the Muscovy, however, there are problems to be sorted out-the obtained fertility rate has been very low. Procedures for dealing with this obstacle involve experiments with differing dilution media and freezing techniques. In this project, the Center is in communication with researchers at Hiroshima University in Japan for technical exchange and cooperation.

Wandering around the Center, the visitor is lost in a very ducky world. The two beaks of a pair of huge duck­-sculpture gate posts arch over the entrance. To the back of the site, four towering ducks support a water tower on their backs. The visitor comes to recog­nize the harsher calls of the male ducks, and quickly learns that curly tails on Pekin ducks identify the drakes. Dr. Tai affectionately calls the Pekin ducks by a local nickname "Silly Duck": they are so obviously slow and waddle so pompously about, whilst the local Tsaiya duck is an energetic, flighty bird with more personality.

Exhibits at the Center include reminders of the old methods of duck rearing. Eggs, for example, used to be incubated in baskets packed with rice husks, which were heated for fifteen days, thereafter being laid out on a bed covered with a quilt-most likely the family bed in a village situation. In this way, they were carried through to hatching in about 28 days.

The Duck Research Center has spanned the gap to custom "designed-model" mass production, enabling duck raising to develop as an agricultural science and a modern industry in Taiwan, far from the cottage industry levels of the olden days.