chicken-n-duck 101

Hello all,

My family and I had just embark on a journey of raising backyard chicken recently. We are completely foreign to this as my husband and I were focusing on the hustle-n-bustle of building our careers for the past decade. Zippity-zip into the present and 4 children later, I now am a stay home mom; not what I had imagines myself years ago; I suddenly got an itch to turn back time and thinking of running-off to the farm and wanting to spend more time with the kids and craving for a slower pace of life. But reality checks in, so here I am getting on the wagon of backyard chicken after I had learned that one of my co-worker and her daughter were raising ducks in their very own backyard. I figure I might as well bring the farm to me(well, part of it anyway) if I can't go to it. Surprisingly, my husband agree without reluctance, WHOOHOO!!! So here I am burning the midnight oil and started doing research like mad scientist on raising chicken, building coop, etc..... I came across this site and here I am.

I have several questions and would appreciate the responses from all the expert out there that'll help me out.

We bought some chicks back in Nov. I wanted to get some ducks but not sure which one I should go with. My purpose of having them are mainly for eggs. Any suggestion of which breed I should get? Also, I don't want the flighty ones if possible.

We are using wood shaving on the floor with our chickens right now. I've read that they can be house together with the ducks if I choose, do I need to change the wood shaving to straw? Since ducks tend to get messy and I hate of having humidity built up in the house when they get mischievous with the water supply overnight.

The chickens are residing in our garage right now and I discovered that they taking turn stay super hungry around the clock. How long before I can completely remove the feeder and waterer out of the chicken coop?

How long before the chickens stop relying on the heating lamp, so I can remove it? Not all the chicken are fully feather yet but thir rate is coming in nicely, I guess.

I probably will get my ducklings sometimes early spring next year. How do I introduce the ducklings into the group without turning my chickens into a maniac since they probably have establish the hierarchy among themselves? If that's the case do I keep the ducklings separate from the chickens until they get to be decent size before I introduce the ducks to the chickens?

Will keeping the ducks and chickens together help mellow the chickens aggression behavior?

Thanks a bunch for taking time to view my thread.

 

Thanks Pyxis. Your respond definitely help us tremendously. I favor the Pekin breed but haven't decide on the breed of the second duckling. I'd love to house them together but might just use the second area mainly for the ducks since it's not serving any purpose but render me confuse as what the previous owner had in mind when they construct the massive eyesore structure for. It'd definitely work perfectly for my mischievous, water-loving addition. We plan to have them free-range with the chickens.