Enclosure size? Please help!

[Kate B]

Hi all

We're looking to get a little duck in a few weeks when we return from our holiday. I have a few questions if anyone can help to answer them for me? I want to go into it knowing everything I can and give it a great home!

Can someone please tell me what sort of size enclosure I will require? It will just be one duck and will be let out to free roam around the patio with us when we're out there. It will have a small duck house to sleep in at night and this will all be inside a "chicken wire" type enclosure - like a dog run sort of thing. I just need to know how big the dog run needs to be.

How often do they need to be allowed to free roam around?

If I were to get a very young one, does it need to be kept in the house for a while first? In what?

What sort of age is best to get one for bonding etc.

Thanks so much!

 

[Pyxis]

The first thing is you're going to need two ducks at minimum. Three is better in case something happens to one of them. Ducks are flock animals and they need to have a friend of their own species. There's just no way you're going to be able to spend the 24 hours a day with it that it would normally be spending with its flock mates.

So, with that out of the way, two ducks don't need much space, nor do three, really. For two you need a duck house that's 8 square feet, for three it would have to be 12 square feet. Each duck will need 10 square feet in the run, although more is always better. You will also want to provide a kiddie pool for them to swim in and you will want to be feeding them a waterfowl feed or an All Flock feed like Purina Flock Raiser. Flock Raiser is nice because you can feed that to ducks for their whole lives from hatch to death.

Ducklings do need to be kept inside at first, yes. For the first month or so of their lives they need to live in a brooder with access to heat. Most people accomplish this using a heat lamp. The area under the heat lamp needs to be about 85 to 90 degrees for the first week, and you can lower that five degrees each week. It also needs to be able to get out from under the heat lamp to cool down, so the brooder needs to be large enough to hold the food and water, have a warm area under the heat lamp, and a cool area not under the heat lamp.

Ducks generally don't like to be picked up, so be ready for that and don't feel bad that once they start to get older, they're really not going to want you to handle them any more. That's normal. If you bond with them a lot when they are younger, they will still like to come over and sit with you and eat treats from your hands. But they will not want you to pick them up, and some would like it if you don't try to touch them at all.

 

[chickens really]

Sorry... Everything mentioned in the above post is true..Ducks need ducks...They poop every two minutes and make lots of mess with water because they need to dunk their heads to clean out their nares and eyes...Ducks get lonely and only thrive with other Ducks....
Maybe rethink About the Duckling before you jump into Duck ownership..?

Best of luck....