can someone give me the skinny on Muscovies...? - Page 2

I love my muscovies!!  I have 1 pekin that makes enough noise for all three of my muscovies.....

Good luck finding some...

i love my muscovy ducks.
mine are white with blue eyes, i love those blue eyes.

i got them originally to help with slug control in the garden
a male and a female
the first babies they had, i gave to a friend of my with an 11 acre pond in the center of their farm
this past summer they had a nest of 8
unfortunately my duck, serafina was killed
and i stepped in to raise the babies
i had 5 ducks and 3 drakes in this nest
i kept 3 ducks, butchered the drakes and gave two ducks away to a neighbor for eggs
i still have their father


they are wonderful pets
they are pretty good about listening to me
they all know their names
every morning ( ever since i started to raise this batch of babies)
we go out to a day pen, normally a movable one but now the old duck pen
their father has his own day pen seperate
we walk around grazing at least once a day
sometimes in the garden sometimes just out back

my drake, falstaff, is semi feral.
i got him as an adult, but even he knows at 4 pm it's time to go into his night crate.
it took him three days to learn that
while i can't actually pick him up or pet him
but he is good and relatively trained
he is NEVER aggressive to me or humans.

the ducks i kept are sweet and very tame
they follow me around when i let them out
i can and do pick them up and cuddle them
when i do that sometimes they lay their heads on my shoulder
if i sit on a hay bale in their pen they will come up and sit on my lap
they like the back of their heads rubbed and under their bills

they lay eggs every day which i use for baking
when they started out laying, their eggs were the size of large chicken eggs
but now they are almost duck egg size

one of the ducks loves to bath and will at any time
the other two ducks are a bit smarter and don't bath during the bitter cold
their father is smart about that as well

the ducks come in at night, to an unheated daylight basement
they put themselves in their night crates
the drake has a seperate crate

i love these ducks so much that i threatened to put diapers on them and let them run around the house
( i didn't do that as they wouldn't be too happy about it)

oh and my ducks love to eat ice and snow
which startled me at first
but they just love it

vi

Just raise them and see what develops! Muscovies can vary a lot in size. Some strains are very large and don't fly. Some are still pretty small and fly well. I have some of both.

treat them as the longest hatching time for ducks. that way you will be sure to give them all the time they need..  do not be too concerned about the last few days when you stop turning them.. I have had many eggs hatch in the turner with no problems.

In fact, when I have guinea eggs hatching on a rotation schedule, I do not bother taking them out of the turning trays in my sportsman bator.

I built a special tray in the bottom where they end up on their own,, with a little help from gravity.. I hatched out over 300 like this last summer and never lost any or injured any..

I absolutely ADORE mine! I received nearly 20 rescue ducks this summer-they lost their mom and were still fuzzy and "imprinted" me...through out the months, we've lost quite a few and now we're down to only 7 but they are the best pets!! They follow us around the farm and "he he he" breathe -talk like noise at us and just plop down at our feet wherever we go. They eat from our hands, too and children really love that. Overall, they are such a joy and wonderful addition to our family. You'll be lucky if you have Muscovies, I'm trying to find more here and they're not as common, I guess...Good luck...

It takes 35 days for Muscovies to hatch!! 28(?) days for regular ducks.

I LOVE my Muscovies they are extremely smart and YES they act as if they know thier names. I talk to mine all the time and they are far more tolerant of my babbling than my regular ducks. Belle, my blue female will even "talk" back.

he is NEVER aggressive to me or humans.

Are you something other than human?? I know when I spend so much time around my critters I don't SMELL very human.