If you could give me one piece of advice, what would it be?

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Be careful when your running ducks and chickens together. If your duck ends up being a Drake and he tries to breed your hen it can cause serious damage or even death.
 
Howdy,

My advice to you is first and foremost use your own common since! Nature always rules in the end. Whatever will be will be no matter how hard we might want something different. Keeping a clean coop and run area is one of the most important things you will have to do to have a very healthy flock. Let nature run it's course.


Howdy,

 
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I'll offer two pieces of advice although I've only been keeping chickens for about 1½ years and ducks for about 6 months:
  1. Let your chickens be chickens. You may not know a lot about raising chickens, but they do.
  2. And I've said this before; Reading BYC can make you paranoid. Keep these facts in mind. BYC has well over 150,000 members posting about 7,000 times on an average day. Many folks only post when they have an unusual problem. The fact that one person has a problem does not mean that you will. It took me three months to learn this one truth, and relax and enjoy my poultry.

Hope you find this helpful.
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from Alabama. Glad you joined us. Love the advice everyone has given you already. The thing I wish I had known when first getting started with chickens is to always build everything (coops, runs, brooders, etc) bigger than you think you'll need. Because I promise, you may only intend to have a few to start with, but chicken math kicks in and the next thing you know you have so many you're a little scared to count them lol. And it's the same with ducks and geese, too. At least that's how it's been in my case
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By the way, ducks are way messier than chickens, so yours are completely normal. But they're worth it. Good luck with your hen
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Hi and :welcome from Ohio. So glad to have you aboard. My advice is to build coop with screws instead of nails. It will make it easier to enlarge the coop when expansion is needed due to chicken math. :lau
 
Kevin565 said:
Be careful when your running ducks and chickens together. If your duck ends up being a Drake and he tries to breed your hen it can cause serious damage or even death.
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Well, thats just scary! I do, as I said, have a door that shuts one coop off from the other. I am still not sure at this point whether the two ducks are male or female, but I am honestly suspecting I may have at least one drake on my hands. Is there a way of telling the difference other than the curled tail feather? I will be keeping a close eye on their behavior, and thanks for the advice!
 
RedBarnFarms said:
Howdy,

My advice to you is first and foremost use your own common since! Nature always rules in the end. Whatever will be will be no matter how hard we might want something different. Keeping a clean coop and run area is one of the most important things you will have to do to have a very healthy flock. Let nature run it's course.


Howdy,
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Thanks! Because I am housing two ducks and a goose as well...cleaning is an everyday job for me! They spend very little time at this point in the coop and almost no time in the run. They free range from 6am until they go in to roost at night but I can't stand the mess myself! I usually knock out the cleaning first thing in the morning just in case they do want to go in and scratch around some! But boy ol' boy are the ducks and goose a disaster! I keep deep wood chips in both coops and literally throw out the gross stuff daily. Any suggestions from anyone on keeping a clean coop with ducks would certainly be appreciated!
 
UPDATE!
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Although I was quite worried about Sugarcube, (she hadn't laid an egg since the deformed one on Saturday and the shell-less on Sunday) I went out to the coop a few minutes ago and she had left me a perfect, beautiful 2oz. egg! It was her best work to date! That's my girl!
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Glad to hear she's all right :thumbsup

You can also quack sex ducks: Males make a sort of quieter raspy sound. Females make the typical loud quack sound that people associate with ducks.
 

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