Hey everyone,
I'm Darren, I live in Toowoomba, Australia. I'm new to ducks and new to the forum.
I have been keen on adopting a couple of ducklings for a couple of years now. After a lot of research and careful consideration, I finally took the plunge and picked up a couple of pekin ducklings from a poultry breeder. After some discussion my g/f (Karen) and I decided to choose 2 females as we haven't got the room to accommodate an entire family of ducklings and apparently 2 drakes can get a bit territorial, so we opted for 2 females. The ducklings were a week old when we picked them up on the 21st of December.
It didn't take us long to name them based on their own very different individual personalities. Karen & I love our music so the names were naturally going to be singers names. One of the girls has a high pitch wail (for the entire hour long trip back home in the car!). She also had a bit of an attitude, so named her 'Mariah' after Mariah Carey who is well known for the same attributes. The other one was lighter in colour, she chirps away and is a little more submissive in character. So we named her 'Kylie' after Aussie singstress Kylie Minogue - anyone familiar with Kylie M would know she is blonde, fairly quietly spoken and was dubbed the 'singing budgie' so we thought it suited.
We've been keeping them in the house, inside a 50L plastic storage container. But they are fast outgrowing it. It's summer here in Australia, so the days are around 30-35 deg C (85-95 deg F) and nights usually don't go below 21deg C (70 deg F). They fill the container with poop and soak the straw in a few hours now. Now I'm off holidays and back to work I can't change the straw several times a day. So looks like they might be moving out to the coop (enclosed section) this weekend. I've already started putting them out in the open section during the day time and they are coping well.
They love playing in the bathtub. I can completely fill it with water now, they dive under the water and swim the entire length, snort their noses under the water, fill the bath with poop and just generally make a mess!
I picked them up a house (chicken coop, but it will do the job!). I don't have a huge backyard, so I'm going to stick the house in the back corner of the yard (between the fence and the garden shed) and fence a small area off around it. I plan on installing a small pond for them to play in. I will lock them up in the coop at night and/or when I'm not home as there is a cat that hangs around who would love to have Mariah & Kylie for breakfast!.
Anyway look forward to sharing some stories and maybe getting some advice from some fellow duck owners. Everyone else thinks I'm weird for wanting pet ducks, but once they meet them they get sucked in and want to cuddle them lol
Here's a couple of photos
The day we picked them up (1 week old). Mariah on the left, Kylie on the right
who could resist a cuddle, that's Kylie on the left getting chirpy!
13 days old, having a swim in the bathtub
and today, 18 days old - that's Kylie hogging the camera on the right
Here's the house we bought them
I'm Darren, I live in Toowoomba, Australia. I'm new to ducks and new to the forum.
I have been keen on adopting a couple of ducklings for a couple of years now. After a lot of research and careful consideration, I finally took the plunge and picked up a couple of pekin ducklings from a poultry breeder. After some discussion my g/f (Karen) and I decided to choose 2 females as we haven't got the room to accommodate an entire family of ducklings and apparently 2 drakes can get a bit territorial, so we opted for 2 females. The ducklings were a week old when we picked them up on the 21st of December.
It didn't take us long to name them based on their own very different individual personalities. Karen & I love our music so the names were naturally going to be singers names. One of the girls has a high pitch wail (for the entire hour long trip back home in the car!). She also had a bit of an attitude, so named her 'Mariah' after Mariah Carey who is well known for the same attributes. The other one was lighter in colour, she chirps away and is a little more submissive in character. So we named her 'Kylie' after Aussie singstress Kylie Minogue - anyone familiar with Kylie M would know she is blonde, fairly quietly spoken and was dubbed the 'singing budgie' so we thought it suited.
We've been keeping them in the house, inside a 50L plastic storage container. But they are fast outgrowing it. It's summer here in Australia, so the days are around 30-35 deg C (85-95 deg F) and nights usually don't go below 21deg C (70 deg F). They fill the container with poop and soak the straw in a few hours now. Now I'm off holidays and back to work I can't change the straw several times a day. So looks like they might be moving out to the coop (enclosed section) this weekend. I've already started putting them out in the open section during the day time and they are coping well.
They love playing in the bathtub. I can completely fill it with water now, they dive under the water and swim the entire length, snort their noses under the water, fill the bath with poop and just generally make a mess!
I picked them up a house (chicken coop, but it will do the job!). I don't have a huge backyard, so I'm going to stick the house in the back corner of the yard (between the fence and the garden shed) and fence a small area off around it. I plan on installing a small pond for them to play in. I will lock them up in the coop at night and/or when I'm not home as there is a cat that hangs around who would love to have Mariah & Kylie for breakfast!.
Anyway look forward to sharing some stories and maybe getting some advice from some fellow duck owners. Everyone else thinks I'm weird for wanting pet ducks, but once they meet them they get sucked in and want to cuddle them lol
Here's a couple of photos
The day we picked them up (1 week old). Mariah on the left, Kylie on the right
who could resist a cuddle
, that's Kylie on the left getting chirpy!13 days old, having a swim in the bathtub
and today, 18 days old - that's Kylie hogging the camera on the right
Here's the house we bought them
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