Your ducks can eat Azolla and if you just start feeding your ducks with Azolla, expect high-quality eggs and significant feed cost savings.
Vitamins and minerals from Azolla will improve the health of your flock. Read further to find out what Azolla is, all the other benefits, and the right way of feeding your ducks with Azolla.
What Is Azolla?
Azolla is an aquatic plant found in lakes, ponds, rivers, and wetlands. People also call this invasive plant mosquito fern or duckweed fern.
Azolla can cover the entire water surface, and ducks enjoy eating this plant while playing in the water.
This is a perfect food for ducks.
Azolla has:
- highly digestible protein (between 20%-30%)
- calcium
- phosphorus
- potassium
- copper
- manganese
- and vitamins A, B12, and more
If you have a shallow pond, you could start growing Azolla and reduce the cost of feeding ducks.
You could achieve significant feed cost savings if you replace 10%-20% of commercial duck feed with Azolla. All the other health benefits are coming as a bonus.
Is Aquatic Plant Azolla Good for Ducks?
Azolla is beneficial for ducks.
Not only will the minerals and vitamins help your ducks produce healthier eggs, but ducks will also have more delicious meat.
If you let your ducks eat Azolla, the shape of eggs will be nicer, the shell will be ticker, and the egg quality, in general, will seriously improve.
Fresh Azolla is low in fat, high in amino acids, and it’s a perfect choice if you are looking for a healthy feed supplement for your ducks. Egg production and weight will increase, plus your ducks will enjoy eating Azolla.
How Much Azolla My Ducks Need?
Azolla can replace 10% or 20% of the standard duck layer diet.
I would say 20% is something you can do, but more than that is not a good idea. Azolla is a perfect organic nutrient-rich duck feed.
Also, it is pretty affordable, meaning you can expect a reduction in feed cost if you start feeding your ducks with Azolla.
Famous Study
This study showed the positive impact of adding Azolla for Khaki Campbell laying ducks.
They divided ducks into three categories based on a different diets. The first one with no Azolla, the second one with 2-5% dried Azolla, and the third one with 3-10% dried Azolla.
They run the test for 80 days. They focused on egg production, feed intake, feed conversion ratio, egg weight, and more.
The study showed all the positive effects and noticed that the results were even better if ducks were fed with fresh Azolla.
Final Words
Vitamins and minerals from Azolla will enhance your duck’s health.
And a high percentage of protein will also positively impact your duck’s meat and eggs.
Studies showed that replacing 10% of a duck’s diet with Azolla increases shell thickness, whole egg content, and body weight.
Feeding fresh Azolla at a 20% level or dried Azolla at a 10 % level will benefit your ducks.