Couple of ???'s Regarding new ducks.

[Tracie70]

Thanks ahead of time to anyone who can help me with these questions.
We recently became parents to 15 ducks. There is a mix of Mallards, and Muscovey's. Some are male and some are female?
My questions are?
Can we eat the eggs of these types of ducks? Even if they are fertilized?
Can we keep the males with the females?

Right now they are being housed with my chickens and we are very new to the chicken life. We have had chickens for about a year and half thus far and have been enjoying it. The coop is fairly large and that is where the ducks are. The chickens can care less that they are there and only go to them to sit on the edge of the ducks kitty pool. Will we have to build them their own house?

Thanks again for any help.

 

[chickensioux]

Hi! You can eat ducks eggs fertile or not. Ducks can be housed with chickens but you will find that ducks are very messy and the chickens will never have clean water to drink. Duck muck their water within minutes. You can keep the males with the females (hopefully you have more females than males) but they will interbreed. Any babies that are muscovy mixes will be "mules" or infertile. Hope this helps some.

 

[Tracie70]

Thanks so much for your reply.
If I am understanding this correctly the muscovey's and the mallard can breed together??? But they might not be fertile so they possibly wouldn't be able to have offsprings of their own. With the ducks if you have too many males they won't fight amongst themselves like the roosters? How can you tell if their male or female? Are they like most of the birds of the wild that the prettier or the more colorful ones are males? Thanks for any help?

 

[animalpro24]

Quote:
How to tell if they are male and female?: By voice: males will have a more quiet, rapsy frog croak kind of quack. Females will have a loud strong, more normal quack.
By tail feathers: Males will have one or two curled feathers on the end of their tail, females will not have this.
By bill: males usually have bills that are olive in color to a greenish yellow.(not sure if this is same for Muscovies) Females will have black and yellow/black.

Once you know how many girls to boys there are tell us.