combining 8 week old and 2 week old pekins in northern MI????

[mikesno]

I have 4 rhode island red hens and 1 pekin duck, i had 2 this morning and one died,(discussed in another post) now i need my remaining duck a partner or two. but im not sure how to go about it, this is my jumping off point. my local store has one week old pekins. that i could eventually combine. however ideally id like to slowly combine some approx. 8 week old pekins into the group. any suggestions welcome. thank you. i am located in northern mi about 2 hours north of grand rapids and 45 min south of traverse city. just outside of cadillac mi.

 

[Amiga]

The thing I am most concerned about is size difference. One guideline I have seen here is not to combine ducklings that are quite different in size - the smaller ones can get hurt, sometimes seriously. Now you could set up a brooder so that you have them side by side with plastic poultry fence between them, each side having their own water and food. That way they could see each other but not harass each other. Every now and then we have reports of the smaller ones ganging up on a bigger one, too.

 

[mikesno]

this is after all what i ended up doing, and all is going well so far

 

[Amanda39]

Where are you in MI? I have 6 Pekin that have just internally pipped. I would be happy to sell them to you. They will be born in 2-3 days. You can have them fresh out of the egg, or I could grow them a bit for you. I only feed organic duckling food, gro gel, natural seaweed and water the first 2 weeks to ensure optimum health. I start bathtub baths at 4 days old in warm water for 5-8 minutes, increasing each day by 1-2 minutes. I use the brinsea warmers, not heat lamps and we snuggle each night with the babies for about an hour. They will be kid and people friendly I also feed organic spring leaves from the grocery store and kale. We take daily walks and they eat all the bugs, weeds and mud they want to. I love raising them, I just can't keep them