Looking to add to our Chicken flock... thinking Ducks and Rabbits?

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Good evening!

So my husband and I have been discussing ducks and rabbits for quiet some time. We currently have some 12 week old chickens including one bantam roo.

I have heard of people housing rabbits with their chickens or ducks with their chickens? Possibly the trio together? We are building a covered 'pen' to protect them from coons and the like during the day and we have converted a metal shed into a coop.

Does anyone have any ideas/feedback for this? Any and all help is appreciated!
:)
 
we too are seriously thinking about rabbits. we have a large open topped run. we think we will build a hutch all along one side of the run that is made of privacy fencing. we plan to build it in such a way that the walls separating the rabbits can be slipped out to increase a section's size such as for a doe w/babies, & then can be re-inserted when the smaller pen size is better. i understand the rabbits have to be separated, especially the buck from the does. the does are put in w/the buck for breeding then returned to her space. he's never to go into her space.
we feel that will make better use of space by putting them in the run & it won't diminish the amount of space the birds have. we're thinking of two does & a buck as breeding stock & use the babies for meat. we're thinking californian as the breed to use.

this is a level of sustainability we've never tried before. we think we will try to do two batches of meatie chickens, one in the fall & one in the spring. so we will probably try to match that w/the rabbits. it gets brutally hot here & we don't want to be messing w/a bunch of dependent animals when the heat is so bad.

we look forward to the manure also for the garden.
 
If you choose to house Ducks with the chickens, Ducks enjoy playing in the waterers. They can make quite a mess in the coop. I made a catch basin to keep the ducks from flooding the coop and it has made quite a difference. As the Ducks splash and play and hold their beach parties, the water that is thrown out of the waterer passes through the screen and into the pan below....NO MESS.



We raised our ducks with the chickens. They have spent so much time together that they flock together in the yard. The ducks are also great at eating weeds and slugs out of the garden.



Ducks are constantly dabbling in every water hole and mud pie that they can find. When its raining and the chickens are sitting in out of the rain and watching, the ducks are actively running around like a pair of little kids going from mud puddle to water hole. To keep them healthy, make sure that you provide a water source where they can wash their bodies and submerge their heads...this is part of their hygene.







Ducks make a great additon to the home flock.
 
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Thank you Rock Home Isle! Very nice pictures too!

I was thinking about getting a small kiddie pool for them to play in, the pan under the water dish is a great idea {big thanks for that picture!}

I am looking forward to getting ducks now :) They look like so much fun and have so much personality.

I think the bunnies will need to have their own hutch but can share the run area with the chickens and ducks...

Thank you again, that helps out tremendously :-)
yesss.gif
 
If you get rabbits...build the hutch in such a way that it is far enough off the ground that the chickens can get underneath it. As the rabbit droppings accumulate under the hutch the chickens will work the area looking for grubs and they will help to compost the rabbit droppings....Chickens are such hard little workers when they are left to forage in the yard.
 
We have rabbits and ducks and chickens. However, rabbits got housed on most northern side of our house due to our lack of shade. Otherwise, initially we planned on putting them together. Once the trees grow up around coop it may be an option, but for now, they have to live elsewhere.

I really recommend the water set up, I bought a big watering trough from TSC and put screen over it, it worked so well. The trough was big enough i didn't have to empty it daily, a really big help. It was stinky but tolerable for 2 days. Also, before I set up like that I swore I would never again have ducks. It was such a big mess. Now I have mellowed and so have they, and I cannot wait to get more ducks.

Good luck. Also our chickens free range some most days and they go right for the rabbit pen to toss around rabbit poo looking for goodies!
 
Just got our bunnies, Bunny and Clyde, and will be building them a hutch outside the chicken coop, but inside the run high enough up so the chickens can get under (very good idea by the way!).

I am definitely going to be doing something with the water and source a small kiddie pond to add to the run for some Muscovy ducks here soon like.

Looking forward to expanding our flock :-) Thank you all for the helpful insight!
 

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