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 “Making
the best of Yilan County’s geographical edge is the
recipe for breeding the most flavorful cherry
ducks,” said 51-year-old Huang Ming-chieh, a
well-known duck farmer in the county’s Sansing
Township, whose poultry has become the source of
top-notch gourmet delicacies.
The beautifully roasted ducks served by the Yilan-based
Silks Place, the sole international five-star hotel
in the county, was voted in September by gastronomes
and netizens in an online poll “the most
mouth-watering crispy ducks ever served in the
country.”
The hotel’s accolade owed much to Huang and the
cherry ducks he breeds also known as Cherry Valley
ducks which can weigh up to 4.8kg in winter and
produce the highest-quality meat.
After graduating from the department of animal
husbandry and veterinary medicine at the Yilan
School of Agriculture and Forestry the predecessor
of National Yilan University Huang worked as a
veterinarian for swine breeders before venturing
into the duck farming industry by starting up the Ho
Hsing Livestock Farm in his hometown about 16 years
ago.
The sharp differences in temperature between day and
night in Sansing Township, coupled with the wind
frequently blowing from the mountains, are ideal
appetite stimulants for Huang’s ducks, which require
about 75 days to mature, leading to their thick
chests and large bodies.
Huang’s ducklings that mature in winter can weigh
4.8kg, compared with ducks raised by other farmers,
whose average weight stands at only 4.2kg.
Although Sansing Township’s advantageous environment
and pollution-free water resources have played a
crucial role in Huang’s success, the provision of
around-the-clock care and a supply of high-quality
animal feed and enzymes to improve digestion are
equally important.
“Breeding ducks should be done as attentively as
raising one’s own children,” Huang said, adding that
he has to stay at his duck farm almost every night
to guard and pay close attention to every move of
his beloved poultry.
“You can never let your
guard down even for one second,” Huang added.In an
effort to give his ducks more space, Huang breeds
only about 35,000 ducks on his eight hectares of
pasture, which could otherwise accommodate a maximum
of 80,000 poultry.
He also went to the
trouble of converting the farm into a “duck
playground,” where the floor is paved with stone to
avoid dust swirling in the air and a pond contains
only shallow spring water to prevent duck excrement
from accumulating and tainting the water.
Huang emerged as a
successful duck farmer despite a sluggish domestic
economy that has forced many duck farmers based in
the county’s Lanyang Plain to go out of business.
Attributing his
unexpected rise to his expertise in veterinary
medicine and his diligence in studying the habits of
cherry ducks, Huang said: “Luck is when preparation
meets opportunity. To have an invincible foundation,
one must work to build distinctive features for
one’s products first.”
Born into a farming
family, Huang said he took a leap of faith with his
career and returned to the township after having
worked away from his hometown for years.“The moon
just seems bigger here [in Sansing Township,]” he
added.
Huang said in the
initial stage of his business start-up, he bred only
a handful of ducks to lower his financial risk and
waited until his farming career got off the ground
to expand its scale.
An environmentally
conscious man, Huang has attached great importance
to keeping his duck farm odor-free and
sustainable.“My ultimate goal is to see Sansing
Township become the first word that crosses people’s
minds whenever they talk about cherry ducks,” Huang
said.
Courtesy: Pakagri.blogspot
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Pakissan.com;
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