Calling all duck owners in neighborhoods...

[HennyPenny2]

I would love for folks who own 2 or more ducks and live in a subdivision to know if you have ever had problems with neighbors or noise issues from your ducks. I live in a very small subdivision and I've have personally kept chickens (the most I have had at one time was 8) going on 10 years, and thankfully even when they have gone on and on with their delightful egg song, I have never had neighbors complain. I have now added 2 ducks to my flock of 6 chickens, a Cayuga and a Buff Orpington both females. I'm a bit nervous because my two neighbors the one closest me and to my coop has moved and is putting their house up for sale end of the month (they were excellent neighbors who will be missed) and the neighbors behind me suddenly moved too so that leaves me with two new neighbors. Even though we all have good sized yards and privacy fenced yards I am a little nervous, especially as I don't know just how noisy 2 ducks will be as the chickens only really make noise when they sing their song. So anyone living under the same conditions I would love to hear how it has gone for you and do you do anything to "keep the peace"? I do plan on giving eggs to at least the one next door, hopefully that will help.

 

[Virus]

I'm in that exact situation. All of our house are very close together and thankfully my neighbors have been cool with them mostly because their kids like playing with the birds. One of my neighbors is moving away soon and we're very worried about it, we're putting in a new, bigger coop for the chickens and the new duck I bought is laying fertile eggs and two are hatching soon so I'll have four ducks and I'm getting more chickens as well. Our neighbors couldn't have picked a worse time to move. I just ask the neighbors if my animals bother them and pass out free eggs every now and then. I also tell them whats going on so there's no surprises.

 

[duckyeah]

I live in town with 3 ducks. Two Welsh Harlequins and a Cayuga, all female. My neighbor has 2 chickens and I think the chickens are louder. The ducks mostly 'chatter' when they want something, but they don't make any excessively loud noises, nothing that could be heard through a closed window next door. However, I used to have 6 and when they were young adults a few of them would make this really loud "QUACK, quack, quack" for whatever reason. The loudest ones (Rouen and 2 buff) went to the freezer. The bigger issue with ducks in a neighborhood are the flies/smell. I spend a lot of time cleaning, spraying, raking to make sure the smell level doesn't waft. In the end, ducks chattering/quacking can be cute, but smell is NEVER appreciated. Haha. Good luck!

 

[HennyPenny2]

I live in town with 3 ducks. Two Welsh Harlequins and a Cayuga, all female. My neighbor has 2 chickens and I think the chickens are louder. The ducks mostly 'chatter' when they want something, but they don't make any excessively loud noises, nothing that could be heard through a closed window next door. However, I used to have 6 and when they were young adults a few of them would make this really loud "QUACK, quack, quack" for whatever reason. The loudest ones (Rouen and 2 buff) went to the freezer. The bigger issue with ducks in a neighborhood are the flies/smell. I spend a lot of time cleaning, spraying, raking to make sure the smell level doesn't waft. In the end, ducks chattering/quacking can be cute, but smell is NEVER appreciated. Haha. Good luck!

Well that's good to hear! Except you saying you got rid of the buff, I hope mine will not be a problem, maybe the Cayuga will keep her quieter? If that's possible. I was hoping they would mostly have that quieter chatter you mention, that shouldn't bother the neighbors, I I am very particular about keeping the coop clean. I have them set up at the end of a long run and their stock pond on pavers and soon to be medium sized river rock that is on sand as I use sand in my run which helps a lot in keeping it dry. I can easily dump their stock tank right onto a rose I have growing next to it outside the run. Hopefully these things will cut down on any extra smell the ducks might add to the chickens. I hope anyway. Sounds like it will probably be my chickens that I may need to worry more about. I live out in a more rural area, my neighbors barking dog a few houses down is far more annoying and nobody seems to mind that to the point of doing anything but you never know what you're going to get with new neighbors (I've had the same neighbors since moving here 10 years ago which has been really nice and they have all been down to earth people).

for good neighbors! I hope so for your sake virus, that you get good neighbors too.

 

[Duck Drover]

Our neighbors were fine with our chickens and ducks until my husband put dirty bedding straight into the planter boxes instead of putting the composted bedding in the planters and putting the fresh stuff in the compost bins. He did not understand the reason I asked him to do the extra step because he did not realize chicken poop needs yo be aged. It did smell bad so the neighbors complained about the smell.

Then the city code enforcement officer tried to tell me that chickens and ducks, which were not listed specifically in the code anywhere, are regulated like dogs and cats rather than like birds (which was the same for chickens in the county code). I had to go to court to fight the city but I won so now our birds are grandfathered in to the old code, which was repealed and rewritten by the code enforcement officer.

Animal control works for the county and they had no issues with our birds, except to give me a ticket because our neighbors reported that our ducklings went under the fence into their yard (their dog dug a hole under our fence). Make sure you are following the laws and you should not get harrassed. We researched the codes prior to getting birds but we had no idea our neighbors would get nasty or that the code enforcement officer was such an idiot.

Ironically, we ended up with more birds grandfathered in than I ever wanted to keep because the same code enforcement officer told me we needed a business license to sell the chicks and ducklings we hatched. We sold some but we kept far more than we planned to keep in order to be sure we could select our best ones for breeding. You don't actually need a license to sell birds unless you are a business that is open to the public. We have birds as a hobby with the hopes they will pay for themselves but it is by no means profitable.

Since we fought so hard to keep our birds, I stopped caring what the neighbors think. The rest of our neighborhood loves our birds and every year more people in our area choose to raise chickens and ducks in their backyards so we have alot of supporters. There is a new housing development going in next to our neighborhood so that is more likely why the city got involved at all.

One neighbor complained to the city that our spayed cat had kittens in their yard but it was obviously someone else's cat. They trap cats in the neighborhood because they don't like them but our cat stays clear of their traps. She does visit with the other neighborhood cats and invites them into our yard to hang out on occasion so that will get the ducks stirred up enough to make some noise. We had kittens (not ours) sleeping with a nesting duck at one time so they don't seem to have an interest in hunting our birds (we raise the babies inside to keep them safe from crows).

Fortunately the nasty neighbor only has the one friend (the cat trapper) in our neighboorhood while the rest of our neighbors are fine. We have just worked on adding more privacy to our back yard and we pay to have our chicken bedding removed as yard waste rather than composting it for our garden. We have rabbits and ducks for fertilizer so the chicken manure is not as good anyway. We smell the neighbors' pot smoke all the time now that it is legal in Washington and we smell their cigarette smoke (which stinks more than chicken poop) so they don't have much right to complain about bird smell. They have given us produce from their garden to feed our birds so I was thinking about sharing eggs with them but I just don't like them enough to care about being nice to them. They have people visit who love our birds, especially the kids, so I don't really care what they think anymore.

 

[Little Byrd]

I have a female runner and a female khaki, and they get VERY loud when they are hungry. Especially when it's time for me to let them out in the morning, but I'm too lazy to get up. They will quack and honk as loud as they can to make me get up lol.

As long as they have food, they won't really make loud noise. Fortunately, I live right next door to a pond with wild ducks that make their own noise, so my neighbors probably don't even know that I have ducks.