Thanks so much for you good wishes. All is going well so far. Lots of "bum" washing for their pasty bums. Cleaning water many times a day and their food dish. With all the other animals, it's a good thing I am retired. I sure likeyours are fancy, how do you apply those. I'm using my tablet right now not my computer.
I have Muscovy ducks and have read that their waste is very toxic. My bird man said not to put the chickens and ducks together because of this. Has anyone else heard that?
We use hardware cloth and nine gauge horse wire to keep predators from accessing most of our poultry. Many use hardware cloth in rabbit cages too but we never use wire as flooring for our birds.
Ducks are WATERfowl and chickens are LANDfowl...besides them needing different kinds of feed (starter and adult foods), they like different kinds of conditions to live in also. Ducks will withstand a lot more moisture than chickens like! LOL
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/243277/chantecler-thread/1460#post_13874259
With your Chanteclers, you should check out the Chantecler thread too and introduce yourself AND your new Chant chicks there!
We all luv photos if you can post some of your birds!
This is one of the hatches I had outside on the lawn middle of last month.
That's a Red Chantecler day old face planted in the chick starter!
Box of Quackers
I never raise landfowl with waterfowl...somebody is bound to be miserable so best to keep each to themselves. No worries as they get older and if you wanted to let them out in a bird yard together...they get along fine with enough space to allow them to hang out together in their own groups where they prefer.
Duck yard last year...a few chooks in the yard, but on the outskirts of the duck bevy...they kinda keep to themselves
BTW I am from Canada, Alberta so get lots of snowy cold weather too...where are you located?
Usually pasty butts on young chicks means they are a bit too cold than they should be. Are they huddling together or kind milling around? It is too hot if they are pressed to the sides of where you are brooding them.
These chicks are all at a happy temperature, milling about and no pasty butts.
We raise baby birds all year round--some natural hatch, some like now, by incubator and brooded under a heat lamp.
Doggone & Chicken UP!
Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada
