MALLARD THREAD...not rouens, Mallards!

[Kroelies]

This guy doesn't have a brown chest either, really weird.

Nixie and her sister look adorable

 

[Daniel-Sorensen]

Some new pictures!

Apricot Snowy


White


Blue fawn


Snowy


Apricot


Blue and white

 

[buff goose guy]

Ugh so many colors Daniel I'm so jealous I would love those purebred mallard colors !!!!!!!!

 

[Daniel-Sorensen]

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[Daniel-Sorensen]

 

[buff goose guy]

the fierce dusky lol

 

[sunnyfishy]

Ugh so many colors Daniel I'm so jealous I would love those purebred mallard colors !!!!!!!!

Agreed so hard. I'd kill for apricot or snowy mallards!

 

[Tlearn98]

Hey there Mallard lovers! Very new to this site! Hope this is correct place to post. I brought home 2 mallard ducklings this past April, thought they'd be a nice gift for my daughters, didn't expect to get attached! I thought we would raise them for a while then turn them into a farm...well it's wintertime and they are def. A part of our family now. I live -in town--my ducks live in a fenced in run...my husband has been building them a beautiful duck hut. I need advice on keeping my ducks through the winter...also on clipping wings in the spring to keep my ducks in my fenced in yard, but to be able to let them out of the enclosure. Is wing clipping a terrible thing to do?

 

[solarpup]

Clipping feathers is not a terrible thing to do, if you do it right. It's just like giving them a hair cut. We try to minimize the clipping, just because we like to watch them fly, and it allows them a bit more chance to escape a predator. (We keep them in an enclosure at night, and only let them wander during the day while we're home. Still, that hasn't stopped hawks from taking a dive at them, even when we are standing only 4ft away.).

For our two mallard drakes, we find that clipping the alpha is sufficient to keep both in the yard. We start off clipping three flight feathers on one wing, and that's usually enough to keep the alpha from going more than half a dozen feet at a time. Once we had to go for a fourth feather. The beta then still has full flight, but he never leaves the alpha behind. (And he's quite the precision little flier, even managing to fly up to me an land on my shoulders.)

As for winter housing, make sure it stays dry, has plenty of ventilation but no drafts, give them plenty of fresh straw on the inside (you will need to turn over the straw every couple of days, and change it once a week - they are poopy little creatures) and they should do quite well. Once it goes below single digits F, we'll bring them in for the night. (But I've certainly heard of people leaving them out in colder weather - ours will sleep outside, even though they always have their coop with straw, for anything above ~30 F.) Heated buckets to keep their water unfrozen, and plenty of food to keep their metabolisms up and keep them warm.

Occasionally during the winter, we'll bring them in and let them swim in the bathtub. Otherwise on the few nice warm, sunny winter days, we fill a tub for them and let them go swimming. But they definitely get less water time in the winter months.

 

[buff goose guy]

Hey there Mallard lovers! Very new to this site! Hope this is correct place to post. I brought home 2 mallard ducklings this past April, thought they'd be a nice gift for my daughters, didn't expect to get attached! I thought we would raise them for a while then turn them into a farm...well it's wintertime and they are def. A part of our family now. I live -in town--my ducks live in a fenced in run...my husband has been building them a beautiful duck hut. I need advice on keeping my ducks through the winter...also on clipping wings in the spring to keep my ducks in my fenced in yard, but to be able to let them out of the enclosure. Is wing clipping a terrible thing to do?

Welcome to BYC!!!!!

Im so glad that you've decided to keep your birds many people who get mallards turn them loose into the wild, which inevitable can kill the bird since it has been domesticated and does not know how to fully survive in the wild.

No clipping is not a bad thing. I find it to be very helpful as i have wild mallards fly into my farm all the time and it's a great way to distinguish the wild mallards from my sweeties.
As for clipping my mallards i find that this style is good for my ducks that free range during the day and got up into the coop at night ( yes the girl is doing this with call ducks but i find it just as useful with mallards.)