Pekin Ducks

Awwwww!!!

I love your Pekin's... I have 1 that is 7 weeks old, 4 ladies plus 6 runners and a white magpie. Dont you just love the chubby faces they have. 3 of my ladies are laying every day, today we got a WOWZER of an egg. It was HUGE

The stock tank is a great idea. We have one for our ducks and they love it more than the large kiddie pool.

BTW, one of our girls laid a double yolker last week and I'm pretty sure she laid another one this week. The egg is HUGE.

Guess I'll only need one egg for the cake I'm baking this week.

Wow! I can't wait for my ducks to start laying eggs!! They're still 'babies'...have a few months to go before I see any evidence of eggs in their Duck Hut.

I think one of the most beautiful features of my Pekin's is their amazing denim blue eyes!! They are 65 days old today...and I have yet to not fall in love all over again every time I look one of them in the eyes. And yes, I agree, their fat li'l faces are adorable!! I also love the way they waddle across grass...and occasionally 'trip' over the garden hose - which is hilarious because it's a noticably different color than grass. Ha ha! I actually try to keep it out of their way, but every once in awhile they run over it anyway. They're just so cute!

We ended up having a large piece of pond liner left from my husband's front pond, which we redone this year. We're making them their very own 6' x 10' pond with waterfall. It will be between 2' & 3' deep. Hubby's making a 'skippy' filter for them which is made from a horse trough. Google "Skippy pond filter" & you can read all about it. I'm also adding a skimmer, larger than necessary pump & waterfall filter system. According to Drs. Foster & Smith pond calculator, it will be about 1,000 gallons.

I built my Duck Hut. My husband & son did the roof - rolled asphalt roofing is just too heavy for me!! LOL!

This is the view on the West side - I hinged almost the entire side so when I hose from the other side, it will come out here. I'm making a sandbox for the muck to go into when I hose, where it will filter through the sand, then rocks, then pea gravel, then back into the earth.


This is the East side view. I'm using this side door to hose through to the other side and I will also put a 'nest' right inside for egg collection in the future.


The front view. The ducks seem to really love it!! I know 6 of my full grown German Shorthaired Pointer's fit in there. LOL!

That is an amazing hutch! My 2 Pekins and 8 chickens live in a old horse stall in the barn that my husband covered with chicken fencing. BTW - the pony tried to go back to it one day and was very perturbed she couldn't get in - lol. Pony has been moved in with a filly who needed a nanny.

My Cayuga is in a dog run that we covered. She is special-needs so can't be with the others.

As of yesterday we aquired our 2nd Pekin - another rescue but we weren't the rescue home. The family that took him in got him from the animal shelter but he was too aggressive for them. I had told them that he is welcome here so they brought him over. He's not so aggressive with our flock - they have a way of mellowing things out.

Jenn

How did you determine the sex of the Perkins at a young age? I can't get the "checking the vent" thing right. It all looks the same back there, lol.
If I'm correct on typing by these links, this is just some semi-recent pictures of my feather buddies.



And this one should be the only one I have completely tamed so far named Koty. The 2 Mallards are slowly coming around to being tame, and only 2 more Pekins are coming around to being tame, while the last 2 go bat sh**, lol.
Names are, (Pekins) Koty (the biggest), Morsie, Alfy, Fetty, Linny, (Mallards) Josie, and Mosie.

For the life of my I have no clue to determine their sex, features and peep differences help but I can't be certain.. Are there any other ways to tell, besides the vent thing?

You can't until they start to "quack" or get their curved butt feather.

I have 2 pekin ducks, which I got from Tractor supply in the spring of "16". I have grown to love them and treat them as my babies. I also have chickens (Production Reds). At first the chickens were mean to the ducks, so I kept them apart until the ducks got a little bigger. Now the chickens and the ducks get along fine, except my drake tries to get frisky with one of my chickens. He only chases one of the chickens around and leaves the other alone, thank goodness there are plenty of places she hides from him.

I use one of the kiddie pools you buy at walmart for my ducks pond. I change out the water every evening. They enjoy it, and seem to be doing well with it. I tried to put in a larger kiddie pool but they had difficulty getting into it so I stayed with the littler pool. They seem to be doing great with it and the chickens. So if you have a small yard try a small kiddie pool for the ducks, it's been working great for me and my babies.

PJ