Breeding Mandarin Ducks

[chickenlisa]

who did you buy your Mandarins from? I've been looking every where but every one is sold out

Where are you located?I have 3 females and 1 male still available for sale this Fall. the male and 2 females are from this May (2014) hatch and the other female is from last year's hatch...They are fully flighted and regular colored. I bought a pair of whites this Spring, so I want to downsize my Regular color numbers...I am NJ, and love it when I can arrange local pickup sales of meet people nearby at least...shipping is so much rougher on them.

Also, placing the nesting boxes a bit away from the water has worked fine for me...I use a baby pool for their swimming water, and the boxes are about 6 ft up and about that far away from the pool. I put cut evergreen branches in their pen in early spring for cover, privacy, softer landing areas, etc...I only ever feed egg layer pellets and crumbles, all year long, always let Mama hatch her own ducklings, have the whole lower half of the pen covered in 1/4-1/2" hardware cloth, and wood barriers nailed horizontally along the top of that so they can't cross over it and climb up and thru the chicken wire on the top half. They can and will run right thru regular chicken wire. They are that small and that fast! After the babies are hatched, all I put out is crumbles for them all to eat. I use chicken 1 gallon waterers for when the babies are tiny, so they can reach the water. I bend a rain gutter guard in half and put it over the edge of their pool in case a baby gets in but can't get out, they can walk up that and over the edge of the pool to the outside. Hope that helps some!
Lisa