Expert aims to improve genes of native ducks

MANILA, Philippines - A fowl raising expert specializing in breeding game fowl is embarking on a project to improve the genes of “itik” or native ducks to raise the country’s “balut” production.

Dr. Eulalio Lorenzo, president and chief executive officer of East Asia Laboratories and Excellence Poultry and Livestock Specialists Inc., said his ongoing genetics research and development (R&D) effort being pursued in coordination with the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI), has already produced 3,000 pure bred native Mallard ducks.

“Starting next year, we will be able to market ready-to-lay ducks, and ducklings,” Lorenzo, popularly known in the game fowl raising and fighting industry as “Doc Ayong,” told The STAR.

“These are authentic layer ducks that are pure bred,” he said.

He added that their R&D effort started with 300 heads of grand parent stock of Mallards provided by the BAI Research Center in Quezon early this year. The large-scale scientific breeding of the purebred Mallard ducks is being done in his two farms – Estancia de Lorenzo (EDL) Farm-Resort in Capas, Tarlac and EDL Farm-Resort in San Mateo, Rizal.

“They were pure Mallard breeds from which we bred what will be our layer ducks that will produce the eggs for our balut and salted eggs,” Lorenzo said.

“We want to establish a good breed of local ducks. Before our R&D project, nobody wanted to get involved in the improvement of the genetics of our ducks,” Lorenzo, a member of the board of directors of the Filipino Inventors Society Producers Cooperative (FISPC), said.

“If we can improve the genetics of our ducks, we will raise their performance, meaning increase their egg production,” he said.

Duck breeders and farmers usually leave their ducks to roam in farms and do not make an effort to scientifically breed their ducks for better eggs and ducklings, he explained.

Lorenzo said currently, there is a low 60 percent ratio of local ducks being able to lay eggs.

Lorenzo, a licensed veterinarian who passed the board in 1983 a year after graduating from the Gregorio Araneta University, now the De La Salle Araneta University, in 1982, said that there was a big demand for “balut” in the local market, with the Filipinos’ love of balut showing no sign of wavering.

With the continuing increase in the number of Filipinos working abroad, he said “balut” has already grown to become an export product.

“Like in the Middle East and in the US, Filipinos there are buyers of balut,” Lorenzo said.

“In Dubai, there are about 400,000 Filipinos. If only 10 percent of them will regularly buy balut, that’s a regular demand of 40,000,” he said.