New to ducks!

[Kaessa]

I just buy mine from Amazon.com. We live where it's hard to get supplies, so I get a lot of stuff from them. Thank goodness for Prime.

 

[needlessjunk]

Thanks so much. Yes Pekin. The pond is 3-4 houses past my house, a subdivision with a field. Do you think I can train them to walk back and forth from my house to the pond? I thought I would try to walk them back and forth. Who knows, once they get in the pond, they might never come out! Will they want to just live at the pond or will they return to my house for feed or shelter? I was also reading the posts about male ducks and chickens. Is is possible for them to live together, or is it a given that the male ducks will try to mate the female chickens?

Do you own the pond? How will you get them off of it. That is a long distance to travel and I would not want my ducks going that far. Not to mention if your ducks do like the pond better they may not come back and that wouldn't be good. Predators can and will swim out to eat them. Ducks are really easy targets. Some people have trained them but to me that is just way too far for them to travel and be safe. I would not show them the pond and if you are in a subdivision I don't know if "free ranging" is a good idea unless all your neighbors are okay with ducks. Male ducks can be a problem with chickens. It depends on the duck. Usually speaking if you have enough females for the male you don't run into as many problems but it is going to be up to your drake. Most males need 3-6 females.

 

[Miss Lydia]

And to add to this, even neighbors with dogs can be a big predator problem wild ducks can fly away if threatened but domesticated can not so anything can pose a predator problems and dog are at the top of the list. And dogs being excellent swimmers does not give the ducks an advantage of being on water. Most of us use kiddy pools for our flocks. .

 

[Chicks and Bees]

Thanks for the good advice

 

[woodlandsprite]

I'm new to ducks too...(Bought my first 2 yesterday) They are really sweet....They seem to be alot heartier than the chicks I bought yesterday too...(3 out of 6 have passed away) Looking forward to my adventure with the ducks, and nice to know I'm in good company...I'll also be checking my duck feed label.....

 

[TheDan]

Yep, I got nutritional yeast. I figured bakers yeast might end up in exploding ducklings

eta: I found the yeast in the bulk section of the grocery store with the quinoa, and barley, and granola'y stuff. Another good call from needlessjunk.

So here's duckieland 2.0... They completely saturate the bedding around the waterer in short order, so I decided to set the waterer on a container filled with rocks roughly the size of the saturation area. Now when I refill the water I can just pour out all that they splashed around, and wash the poop off the rocks. They were also knocking the feeder off the brick so I zip tied it on. Very sturdy now.

 

[Miss Lydia]

Yep, I got nutritional yeast. I figured bakers yeast might end up in exploding ducklings

eta: I found the yeast in the bulk section of the grocery store with the quinoa, and barley, and granola'y stuff. Another good call from needlessjunk.

So here's duckieland 2.0... They completely saturate the bedding around the waterer in short order, so I decided to set the waterer on a container filled with rocks roughly the size of the saturation area. Now when I refill the water I can just pour out all that they splashed around, and wash the poop off the rocks. They were also knocking the feeder off the brick so I zip tied it on. Very sturdy now.

your a fast learner!!

do you have a thermometer in your brooder to keep track of temps? your heat lamp looks low. don't want to roast the little ones.

 

[TheDan]

Thanks for the kind words! It stays about 85°-88° in the brooder around the lamp. It's not really a heat lamp, but a red 72w bulb (100 government watts). I'll probably need to raise it up soon tho because they are getting taller. Don't want them to stretch up and burn their head, lol...

 

[Miss Lydia]

Thanks for the kind words! It stays about 85°-88° in the brooder around the lamp. It's not really a heat lamp, but a red 72w bulb (100 government watts). I'll probably need to raise it up soon tho because they are getting taller. Don't want them to stretch up and burn their head, lol...

 

[TheDan]

The little duckies are growing at a nice rate. I had to upgrade their "house" from the 20 gal tote to a 35 gal one. Hopefully that'll last them another week or so