Has this been done before?

llombardo

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I have 4 chicks and 3 ducks(female pekin, female khaki and male khaki). It's very possible that 2 of the 4 chicks are boys. No one wants roosters. I don't have a problem with them but I know two will be a problem.

Here is my idea...
One of the possible boys is really close with the pekin--has been since day 1. I am going to have an enclosure for the ducks(with a duck house) and the chickens will have an area with the coop. In order to solve my problem I was thinking of putting the rooster that is buddy buddy with the duck in the duck enclosure and adding a roost bar in the duck house for him. Then I was going to get a couple more female chicks to add to the other side with the other rooster.

Will this work? Can it work? Is there anything else I can do to make it work?
 
Even If you do keep the 2 roosters separate, your ratio of rooster to hen is way off. You may encounter problems down the road. The accepted ratio is about 1 to 10. You may be encountering your hens featherless due to over breeding. Some breeders do keep trios for breeding purposes. Not sure if the roosters are with the hens full time. They keep such trios for specific breeding, and in separate pens.
WISHING YOU BEST.... :highfive:
 
Not sure the cockerel in with the ducks is a good idea,
if it doesn't work out, extra and troublesome cockerels are delicious.

The 'rooster' to hen ratio of 1:10 that is often cited is primarily for fertility efficiency in commercial breeding facilities.
It doesn't mean that if a cockbird has 10 hens that he won't abuse or over mate them.
Many breeders keep pairs, trios, quads, etc, cooped together.
It all depends on the temperaments of the cock and hens and sometimes housing provided.
Backyard flocks can achieve good fertility with a larger ratio.
 
I actually find that rooster over breeding issues are usually due to either a bad roo, multiple roos so they are trying to "one up" each other, or soft/more delicate feather quality on the hen.

One rooster to one hen can be just fine if it is a good rooster.
 
I think it's more of a problem of personality, if you have sweet roo who just likes to hang out you may have no issues, if he is agressive/wanting to breed then he's going to probably take out his frustrations on the ducks. Could always try and have chicken stew if it doesn't work out.
When I was young all my hens got snatched by a predator so I was left with a roo and a bunch of ducks. He got along fine with them had no problems. But he was very chill, he'd get cranky with the drakes on occasion but nothing worthy of seperating them, just lots of squaks and puffed up chests lol.

Edit: They were all raised together, the roo with the original ducks and then the ducks had lots of babies that were then raised by their mums with the whole flock which included all the chickens. These were mostly mallard ducks, had one khaki and a couple other breeds at the time.
 
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