Last night, one of the eggs under my call duck hens hatched! After about 10 minutes, it became clear they didn’t want to take care of it, but stay on the couple of eggs they had left. We moved him inside, with 3 2 day old chicks. They got along just fine! Couldn’t feed them until today though, as I had no duck starter on hand, and the little dude can’t eat chick starter. He’s a happy, healthy little duckling!
Just to let know you, in case you're ever in the same pinch again, they can eat chick starter. You'll just need to supplement it with niacin if you plan on using it long-term for ducklings.
Just to let know you, in case you're ever in the same pinch again, they can eat chick starter. You'll just need to supplement it with niacin if you plan on using it long-term for ducklings.
Thanks! Though I forgot to mention It was medicated, and I’m pretty sure they can’t have that? He’s pretty lonely now, we had to move his friends outside so he could have duck started. He has a little McDonald stuffed animal with him in there though! He thinks it’s real, and it’s adorable!
Thanks! Though I forgot to mention It was medicated, and I’m pretty sure they can’t have that? He’s pretty lonely now, we had to move his friends outside so he could have duck started. He has a little McDonald stuffed animal with him in there though! He thinks it’s real, and it’s adorable!
Last night, one of the eggs under my call duck hens hatched! After about 10 minutes, it became clear they didn’t want to take care of it, but stay on the couple of eggs they had left. We moved him inside, with 3 2 day old chicks. They got along just fine! Couldn’t feed them until today though, as I had no duck starter on hand, and the little dude can’t eat chick starter. He’s a happy, healthy little duckling! View attachment 1394243View attachment 1394244View attachment 1394245
There’s also a red panda, but he likes the penguin better! I’m getting ready to head to bed, and need to take it out to prevent a fire...He sounds so sad! It’s heartbreaking!! Hopefully one of his siblings will hatch so he’s not lonely
Thanks! Though I forgot to mention It was medicated, and I’m pretty sure they can’t have that? He’s pretty lonely now, we had to move his friends outside so he could have duck started. He has a little McDonald stuffed animal with him in there though! He thinks it’s real, and it’s adorable!
They can The 'fact' that they can't have medicated feed is myth. While there are some medications that can be in feed that can be harmful to them, like the medication they put in some game bird feeds to control blackhead, most medications found in feed do not hurt them at all.
Amprolium, which is what is most commonly found in medicated chick feed, is harmless to them. They don't need it, but it doesn't hurt them. I've given amprolium to ducklings myself with no ill effects.
If someone gives you a blanket statement saying 'no medicated feed can be fed to ducklings' then they are misinformed (or just don't want to explain about which medications are safe and are saying it as a blanket statement, which honestly is not helpful at all and perpetuates the myth; sometimes even veterinarians are guilty of this if they don't want to deal with going into all the details - or are just plain wrong because they're working off outdated info or info that's only really good for large scale farms). Medicated feed can be medicated with a lot of different things, and only a small portion of those things are harmful to ducklings.
I also have a veterinarian that I use for my parrot and poultry, who is very experienced with poultry and actually sees and treats them regularly. I ran it by him too to be safe and he also says amprolium is fine, and is in fact used in waterfowl to treat coccidiosis in the rare cases that they do get it.
And, Holderread, the premier breeder of waterfowl in the country and the person who actually wrote Storey's Guide to Raising Ducks, also tested various medicated feed on their ducklings and found them all to be safe. Here's the info on that, taken direct from the book:
So, amprolium has been tested on waterfowl, is used on waterfowl when they need it, and I personally have fed it to ducklings myself and it causes no issues whatsoever.
So if you're ever in a case again where all you have is medicated feed, don't worry, you can feed it to your ducklings safely.
I mentioned above about vets that don't give good accurate info for one reason or another - I have a story about that below but I put it under a spoiler since it's a little off-topic.
I called the university vet at a huge prominent university near me because I needed to get a necropsy done to figure out which respiratory disease my chickens had.
They were happy to do the necropsy, but the head vet of the poultry division also wanted to talk to me. So here's what I already knew - that the disease had come in on some guineas that I had purchased, and that it WASN'T mycoplasma gallisepticum because it only affected the chickens and guineas, not the ducks.
Well, the university vet was absolutely convinced that A) it was definitely mycoplasma despite what I said above, she didn't even bother to consider the fact that there are plenty of other respiratory diseases that affect only chickens and not ducks. Nope, had to be the one disease, it was honestly like she didn't even know about the other diseases. And B) that my chickens were sick because they are kept in runs with the ducks because ducks are 'wet' and that makes chickens sick. Never mind the fact that there is no water in the coops, so the chickens aren't getting wet, and the ducks were acting totally healthy and did not have diseases. She wanted to blame the whole thing on my ducks sharing a run with the chickens and the chickens getting wet. That's not even how diseases work in general.
Needless to say, I didn't listen to her and got testing done, and it came back as coryza, which is one of the diseases I expected. What else she didn't tell me, and what I already knew, is the only way to actually get rid of these diseases is to cull all your chickens and start over (the same being true for the disease she was insisting it was). That's what I did. What she wanted me to do was go out and buy Tylan and treat them with that, but all that would accomplish is alleviating the symptoms. It would still leave them carriers and they'd still get sick again whenever they got stressed.
So, in this instance, I actually knew more than a university vet. And you know why that is? Because they don't see animals on a regular basis anymore, and they also pretty much only deal with large scale operations and have no clue how things work for backyard owners of birds. The advice they have is pretty much only good on that scale. They didn't tell me to cull my birds because in a large scale setting, who cares if they're sick? They're just gonna pop out eggs for two years and then get turned into soup anyway, no big deal. Not the same at all as it is for people who keep chickens for breeding or pets or showing like I do.
Point being, a small, local vet who sees birds regularly, or even just breeders who've had birds for years and have the experience, often have better information on this type of stuff than large scale vets like state vets or university vets.
There’s also a red panda, but he likes the penguin better! I’m getting ready to head to bed, and need to take it out to prevent a fire...He sounds so sad! It’s heartbreaking!! Hopefully one of his siblings will hatch so he’s not lonely View attachment 1394469 View attachment 1394467
The 'fact' that they can't have medicated feed is myth. While there are some medications that can be in feed that can be harmful to them, like the medication they put in some game bird feeds to control blackhead, most medications found in feed do not hurt them at all.
Hens go broody when you don’t want them to… and won’t go broody when you do. 
