Mallards messier than Muscovy?

[Heartsopenwide]

Are muscovy easier to keep with chickens than mallard breeds? My friend suggested muscovy, saying they don't need water as much as mallard breeds, so their runs are easier to keep clean. How true is this? What is everyone's experience on keeping
Muscovy ducks with chickens vs keeping mallard breeds with chickens?

 

[ruthhope]

Hi @Heartsopenwide

I don't have chickens but I have muscovy and pekins.

The pekins will spend all day in or close by a wading pool. They are real water babies

My muscovy drakes are stinkers. Two will bath, maybe weekly [time of year makes no difference]. The two bathed this morning after I put aired water in their pool. The other muscovy drake only bathed once -- to my knowledge -- in the whole of 2022! I threw him in the pool a few times and he climbed straight out, so I have to resort to hosing him down when he gets too "ripe".

My son's muscovy female, who lived with pekins, bathed daily with the pekins.

So my experience is that muscovy drakes don't need a filled wading pool available daily. They do need deep tubs of water for submerging their heads and drinking. They can make a mess with the tubs of water and they will "dab wash" -- try and bathe by splashing themselves from the water tubs

 

[Canadian Wind]

Because of the risk of having a drake do the unmentionable with a chicken hen and possibly killing her, I wouldn't recommend keep ducks of any kind in with chickens. Mine free range together, but they have their own coops.

And the Muscovy are just as messy, in a different way. Their poop is just as liquid and they'll splash the water all over the place. Not that I give them water in their coop. I don't like mucking out THAT much!

 

[Heartsopenwide]

Because of the risk of having a drake do the unmentionable with a chicken hen and possibly killing her, I wouldn't recommend keep ducks of any kind in with chickens. Mine free range together, but they have their own coops.

And the Muscovy are just as messy, in a different way. Their poop is just as liquid and they'll splash the water all over the place. Not that I give them water in their coop. I don't like mucking out THAT much!

I ordered sexed ducklings. All females. No drakes...

 

[bhaugh]

Muscovies will swim daily if given the chance. It helps to keep their feathers in better condition and they really like it. Although they only need enough to clean their nares, if you can afford the water why deny them

 

[Heartsopenwide]

I ordered sexed ducklings. All females. No drakes..

Muscovies will swim daily if given the chance. It helps to keep their feathers in better condition and they really like it. Although they only need enough to clean their nares, if you can afford the water why deny them

I plan to give them water for bathing/swimming. I just heard they don't use it as much as Mallard breeds.

 

[ruthhope]

Muscovies will swim daily if given the chance. It helps to keep their feathers in better condition and they really like it. Although they only need enough to clean their nares, if you can afford the water why deny them

Ha ! @bhaugh you haven't met my muscovy!!!! They have a kiddie pool full of clean water year round and one of them has only bathed once to my knowledge in the last year. If I put him in the pool he gets straight out. Another, Daffy, bathes about once a week and has bathed in water with ice in it, but he had a time in November and December 2022 when he didn't go in the pool at all -- he was molting and my two pekins chose that time to exclude him from the pool. Yet even when the pekins were separated, he didn't bath. My most recently acquired muscovy came in December and, like Daffy, bathes about once a week.

They are boys though; their sex might be part of the unwashed problem!!!