- May 9, 2016
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Afternoon, everybody! Some of you have responded to my threads about ending up with 5 males out of a straight run of 6 ducklings. Now they're getting to the point where they're getting aggressive (~4.5 months), and it's time to give 3 of them a new home. My future mother-in-law and her husband have 6.5 acres with a pond about 35 minutes from us. That'll be quite a change from around 1/4 acre backyard with a kiddie pool. We'll be giving them the 2 mallards since they can fly. We'll take 1 Welsh Harlequin to the swap at the end of this month. He's very pretty. We have 4 female ducklings coming in from Metzer this week! (Cayuga & Welsh Harlequin)
Several concerns:
1. There's a fence at the edge of their pond. The ducks are used to staying in a fenced area. If they see the water, I'm sure they may fly over the fence (it's downhill so they'll clear it easily), but won't be able to find a way to fly back over (not much land on the other side/ducks aren't very smart), especially with this being a new home that they don't consider home yet. Should I just buy them another kiddie pool and hope they ignore the pond for a bit?
2. I'd like to get them to accept this place as home as quickly as possible. Any tips or tricks to do this would be great.
3. They've recently been giving us trouble getting them in the house at night. That started when it rained here for 10 days straight and they wanted to stay out and play in it. Since then, it's been a real fiasco. I'm afraid it will be an even bigger chore to get them to go up at night with 6.5 acres to roam, and that's on top of the pond. They'll have plenty of places to be in cover (under decks, an unused horse stall, etc.), but shouldn't they be closed in at night?
4. They have around 18 chickens, free range during the day. At the moment, several young roosters, but they plan to thin them out soon. The chickens stay near the house and the pond is probably 120 yards away from that. Even though the 1 or 2 roosters they keep will be 18-20 pounds, I've heard ducks can really hold their ground, playing the confidence game. One of them is pretty aggressive, so I believe it.
The mallards are the best equipped for the location, and they have several dogs that are in a pen on the property, never had chickens killed on the property by an outside threat. This transfer is probably going to cost me a couple hundred bucks since I'll be buying/building another shelter for them, and some shavings, food/containers, and water containers to keep them going awhile (after all, they're doing us a favor), so I want to make sure I do this giving them the best odds of survival.
As always, I really appreciate any responses with your experiences or ideas.
Several concerns:
1. There's a fence at the edge of their pond. The ducks are used to staying in a fenced area. If they see the water, I'm sure they may fly over the fence (it's downhill so they'll clear it easily), but won't be able to find a way to fly back over (not much land on the other side/ducks aren't very smart), especially with this being a new home that they don't consider home yet. Should I just buy them another kiddie pool and hope they ignore the pond for a bit?
2. I'd like to get them to accept this place as home as quickly as possible. Any tips or tricks to do this would be great.
3. They've recently been giving us trouble getting them in the house at night. That started when it rained here for 10 days straight and they wanted to stay out and play in it. Since then, it's been a real fiasco. I'm afraid it will be an even bigger chore to get them to go up at night with 6.5 acres to roam, and that's on top of the pond. They'll have plenty of places to be in cover (under decks, an unused horse stall, etc.), but shouldn't they be closed in at night?
4. They have around 18 chickens, free range during the day. At the moment, several young roosters, but they plan to thin them out soon. The chickens stay near the house and the pond is probably 120 yards away from that. Even though the 1 or 2 roosters they keep will be 18-20 pounds, I've heard ducks can really hold their ground, playing the confidence game. One of them is pretty aggressive, so I believe it.
The mallards are the best equipped for the location, and they have several dogs that are in a pen on the property, never had chickens killed on the property by an outside threat. This transfer is probably going to cost me a couple hundred bucks since I'll be buying/building another shelter for them, and some shavings, food/containers, and water containers to keep them going awhile (after all, they're doing us a favor), so I want to make sure I do this giving them the best odds of survival.
As always, I really appreciate any responses with your experiences or ideas.