Mariah & Kylie - my pekin ducklings!

[Going Quackers]

Super adorable! we have a house like that, except we keep two banty silkie chickens in it, and clearly are deep into winter lol



Watch the ramp pekin are not agile, they are great in water but usually grow to be pretty substantial in size .. so that may lead to an issue with the smaller housing and navigating ramps.

I see another poster has helped with feeds, as i am in an entirely different country i would be little help there, where i am at, we can do growers(duck, chicken) and/or a multi purpose feed like and all flock/flock raiser.

Do update us, they will grow real fast.. that's the trouble with waterfowl, the baby stage is just a flash lol

 

[toowoombapekins]

yeah I keep the door closed at the moment while they are inside the enclosed section (this week has been fairly cool and windy so I put them inside over night), so they don't attempt to go down the ramp.

I have noticed they are rather cumbersome, and was concerned about the size of the ramp, so I'm planning on constructing or modifying the ramp to be around double the width and see how they go. Biggest challenge I will have is convincing to climb the ramp at all! It took me a few days to convince them to jump into the water container at the back of the coop! They were so scared of it when I first put it in.

If they outgrow this enclosure then I will look at something bigger. There is a shed place down the road from me who sells what appears to be a fairly decent sized poultry enclosure. It's fully caged, with a gable tin roof and big enough to walk inside. I would just need to build some sort of smaller shelter inside.

I am in the process of fencing in a section in my backyard and concreting a section to mount the coop. That way I can let the ducks out during the day into the fenced section, and then lock them away inside the coop at night so they are safe from predators.

As you mentioned, these ducks grow fast, so at least I will soon find out if I need to upsize!

 

[toowoombapekins]

and thanks for the info ktduck!
They are nearly 4 weeks old now, I will keep them on the duckling feed for another couple of weeks and then look at some adult feed

 

[toowoombapekins]

Sooooooo cute! And nice set up

they are so cute!
I've got to go away with work for a week next week, the girlfriend is going to drop around every evening to top up their water & food and tidy the enclosure up when required.
But they are going to grow so much in that week, a bit sad that I will miss out on a week of their rapid growth, I will hardly recognise them by the time I get back!

 

[Going Quackers]

yeah I keep the door closed at the moment while they are inside the enclosed section (this week has been fairly cool and windy so I put them inside over night), so they don't attempt to go down the ramp.

I have noticed they are rather cumbersome, and was concerned about the size of the ramp, so I'm planning on constructing or modifying the ramp to be around double the width and see how they go. Biggest challenge I will have is convincing to climb the ramp at all! It took me a few days to convince them to jump into the water container at the back of the coop! They were so scared of it when I first put it in.

If they outgrow this enclosure then I will look at something bigger. There is a shed place down the road from me who sells what appears to be a fairly decent sized poultry enclosure. It's fully caged, with a gable tin roof and big enough to walk inside. I would just need to build some sort of smaller shelter inside.

I am in the process of fencing in a section in my backyard and concreting a section to mount the coop. That way I can let the ducks out during the day into the fenced section, and then lock them away inside the coop at night so they are safe from predators.

As you mentioned, these ducks grow fast, so at least I will soon find out if I need to upsize!

Sounds good, as i said we have similar it's a good baby coop or banty but for a large breed duck like pekin, i think you will find it won't do. You could build, if your up for it. The chicken coops for dummies book has a good minimal coop(4x4) that we made for my call ducks(a bit oversized for them lol) but a nice home, simple build.

 

[ktduck]

They are just so **** cute! I love Peking ducklings !!
You could even jut buy a large dog kennel for them and build an enclosure around it. That's what we have done for them and it was cheap and great

 

[Miss Lydia]

Those ducklings are adorable, one tip on grit though, grit is something they need to be able to chew up their feed since they don't have teeth to do with. it needs to be crushed rocks very tiny, they can usually find this on the ground if being kept outside and you don't have a ton of snow covering the ground. But anytime you feed ducklings anything other than their feed they need grit along with it. and to teach them to go into the ramp on their own you might try dried mealworms, buy some for them and give as a treat then bring them out for training place at foot of ramp and work on getting them to walk a tiny bit to pick them up then just slowly place them further up the ramp till they have mastered the whole ramp. And I would dif make the ramp wider.
http://poultrykeeper.com/general-chickens/types-of-poultry-grit

 

[LaurelC]

Congratulations! My mom spent about a year living near Toowoomba before circumnavigating the whole country in a campervan, then moving back to the states!

The ducks are SO CUTE!

 

[toowoombapekins]

some more updates

Kylie & Mariah at 34 days old, they keep growing and over the last week or so have started to 'cluck'

playing in their new pool



let loose in the yard, very hard to catch them now!!

 

[toowoombapekins]

thanks

I only moved to Tooowoomba about 6 years ago. I grew up in Brisbane.
Toowoomba is a lot smaller and not anywhere near as busy. I like it