Growing your own duck food, and which breed would be best?

[Lute]

Mine love green leafy things (lettuce, bok choi).

If you're still looking for advice on duck breeds, Pekins usually hit 8 lbs in 8 weeks. Muscovy are delicious but take longer (I don't have any so I don't know how long it takes).

 

[la dee da]

Thanks lute.
Anyone else have experience/suggestions?

 

[la dee da]

No one else?

 

[rainplace]

If you are not interested in the jumbo pekins, then for meat ducks you may want to look at saxony, muscovy, and silver appleyard.

 

[billw]

Yep - we boil up the potatoes, let them sit overnight, and feed them the next day. We had to break them up at first, but now they will tear into them on their own.

 

[destinduck]

Im with everyone on the Pekins .Their growth rate is phenomenal. I just dont know why you are so down on bagged feed,Sorry to say but without a pond I just dont see it happening without way way more trouble than its all worth. Moreso if you dont have alot of land. Also If you want to get them fat and eat em you have to throw the food to them 24/7. Ducks and chickens are worlds apart on freeranging needs. But Good luck .

 

[rainplace]

We grew out muscovies without much feed at all and they dressed out just fine. They are fantastic at foraging. It does depend on how much land you have. I would imagine that if the op has enough room to grow out feed, then they have enough room for foraging.

My biggest problem with bagged feed is that they do not use animal or insect protein. Of the domestic fowl, I think only geese are herbivores, and though I do see them eat seeds on weeds, the geese seem to prefer grass and leaves. It makes me sick to support the soy industry.

The jumbo pekin would not work in the type of situation the op is talking about, and you can get a good carcass from other ducks. It's the same as growing out a dual purpose chicken compared to a cornish cross. To me the dual purpose, though it has much less meat, tastes a lot better.

Ducks will find plenty of bugs in grassy areas, especially if you leave water all over the place so they can get into the soil. Still supplementing them in the mornings and evenings will make sure they get their nutritional needs met, yet will still encourage them to forage during the day.

 

[nickie]

I do not grow my own feed for the ducks, so I can't help you there. I do allow free ranging and I supplement with layer feed once a day. They get all vegetable scraps thrown to them where they clean up what they want then allow the chickens to have the rest. I have a Pekin (not the jumbo veriety), a rouen, and a cayuga. My pekin keeps herself at a nice 10-12 lbs. I had another pekin who maintained a 9 lb weight. The cayuga is about 7 and the rouen about 8. Like I said, I feed them a healthy amount once a day and they feed themselves the rest.

 

[la dee da]

Sorry for taking so long to reply, I didn't see that I had responses from my profile so I didn't think to check.

The silver applyard, rouen, and saxony are the breeds that I'm most interested in, though the muscovy might be better especially since dad will be doing the killing (he likes ducks, but muscovies are ugly [no offence intended]). My biggest problem with muscovies is I don't know if I would have to do anything special, since that muscovy law craziness a while back left me confused. I would like to avoid a white bird, as we have a few coopers hawks living here.

The biggest reason I like the rouen is because I've read they go broody and they look a lot like mallards. The saxony is very pretty and lays well which is why I like them, and the silver appleyard I've read is a good forager. I've read that the rouen has two kinds: meat and layer. The layer is the one I want as from what I read, the meat variety is difficult to breed and doesn't lay very well and the layer one still has a good amount of meat.

We have about 2 1/2 acres of open land and 5 wooded. A 60x60 foot area of the open land is cut out for moms bushes and plants that she wants to sell. There are a few of reasons why we want to be off bagged feed:

1. We can't afford organic food, and the rest has GMO.
2. If we can grow some meat for only the cost of labor then it'll help the wallet.
3. We want to avoid soy, and that's near impossible to do with processed animal food.

The "duck coop" I'm thinking of making would be 4x8 foot, so not that big but I only plan to house 2-5 hens and one drake, plus any babies the hens are raising before slaughter. I'm hoping that by keeping the number down, they'll be able to find forage more easily. They would be sharing the 2 acres with about 15 chickens, a couple of gardens, and in a year, possibly 3 geese. Does this sound like enough space?

 

[la dee da]

Anymore suggestions/opinions?