Mandarin Duck thread ( for posting pictures and discussing)

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Hi All -

I will post some pictures later. but All 5 of my Mandarin hens have been incubating their own eggs. I always let them hatch their own eggs and I actually let them raise their ducklings. it is true that it is very tricky to let the babies with their mothers. those ducklings can squeeze through everything and they can climb like squirrels. After the mother has called all her ducklings out of the nest box, I make the hen and her brood walk into a separate pen adjacent to the main pen where my breeders are in. And there she stays with the babies until they are covered in feathers and then I put them hen back in the main pen and continue to raise the juvenile birds by themselves. It works well. I do that with both wood ducks and mandarin ducks.

I now have 5 Mandarin hens on eggs. One has 15, one has 12, one has 9, one has 11 and one has 11. There might be a few wood duck eggs in their nests as I keep both species. Although most of my wood duck hens have already been off the nests with their broods for a few weeks. Wood ducks seem to get going earlier than their Asian counterparts in the spring.

I spend a lot of money of mealworms and crickets for the first couple of weeks after they hatch but it gets them over that critical period. Once they get to be 2 weeks old, they are less likely to die. They need tons of animal proteins at the beginning. it can be expensive ;)

Manny L. Antonacci
 
So my mandarin has been sitting on the eggs for 11 days now and I just noticed some rat droppings near the food. What do you guys reckon I should do? I will try and block any entrances and of course make the pen baby-proof but I'm worried the rat(s) will still find a way in. I've had a couple of domestic ducklings disappear over night before which I presumed was rats and I don't want it to happen again. How easy is it to shepherd them in to a duckhouse at night? or should I get a rabbit run or something to put them in? I was hoping to let her rear them as I have no brooder or any idea what to do. Cheers
 
as promised here


are some pics. I may include some pictures of my wood ducks even though I know that this is the Mandarin thread ;)





Manny Antonacci
 
Hello. I would suggest trying to get rid of the rats before the ducklings hatch. So you should put some rat poison inside the pen (under a crate or something that will keep the ducks away from it). Also use some of those live traps. If you get the rats out of there before they hatch, that would be best because they WILL go after the ducklings.
 
thank you guys. So nice to find other folks who love and appreciate these fascinating and stunning species.
I am posting more pics since I know we all like to look at pics of other breeders (again forgive me if I include wood ducks even though this is a Mandarin duck thread).








 

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