Duck breeding question???

[SwedishDude99]

Me and my cousin were wanting to breed ducks starting in a couple months. I've read storeys guide to raising ducks, and have spent hours on the Internet researching it. It didn't, however, answer some of the more uncommon questions I have that are kinda unique to what I wanted to do. So, here goes.
1. My cousin lives a couple minutes away from me and she is getting female ducks while I have the males. Would it work if we transported the females to my house and introduced one or two of them to my male ducks and bred them? ( the males would not be in the same pen of course)

2. How often do female ducks go broody? If not often, then we would try to find a broody chicken or duck and buy it.

3. Is natural brooding a pretty reliable method?

All answers are greatly appreciated

Thanks, Swedishdude99

 

[Amiga]

Welcome!

I don't know if I quite comprehend your plan with transporting the females. But actually keeping the boys' clubs and girls' clubs separate may be a really good idea.

The thing that would not be good is leaving a female in with more than one male, or with a male who is too - er - amorous - for long. Males will injure and kill females sometimes. Not all drakes do this, but you probably cannot tell ahead of time if he's going to be mellow or aggressive.

So it would be your job to protect the ducks (females). Their lives depend on it.

My broodies get that way once a year. Incubators are the way to go for many folks, and there is a Thread Formerly Known as Hatch Day is Today I suggest you look over. It's huge now, don't be intimidated. Just dive in at some point.

There is also a natural brooding thread, and I apologize for not remembering the title of it. Wait a minute....https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/743710/old-fashioned-broody-thread-for-ducks-2013-edition

There it is.

 

[SwedishDude99]

Thankyou! I'll just make my plan more clear here really quick for anyone else who wants to respond. So my cousin is going to actually have the female ducks at her house and the drakes will be at mine. So basically, I will not be owning the females and they will not actually live at my house. They will live at my cousins. So when we wanted to breed them, she would bring two females over and we would move one drake and the two females into a breeding pen away from the other male. We would then keep the eggs at my house and allow the broody hen to hatch them here in another small coop. I apologize if this still doesn't make sense, it is kinda complicated. just let me know if its still confusing and I will try to make it clearer.

 

[Amiga]

I think I get it now. That might really work, since separating broody moms and ducklings is important.

With domestic ducks, it is hit or miss as to who will actually go broody. I have three who get broody. They are broody now. I let them sit on unfertilized eggs. The rest of the flock could care less about trying to hatch eggs. But I want to have a few broodies in case I ever want to hatch. And we have a drake. At this point, any fertile eggs are buff Orpingtons, not runners.

 

[SwedishDude99]

Ok thankyou!!! Yeah I forgot to mention that we are not keeping the ducklings, we are selling them. Just an easy and fun way to make money so it is a good idea to separate the ducklings from the broody the day they hatch right?