Muscovy keepers share your pics!

[casportpony]

@holm25 , your ducklings need some sort of chick starter or non-laying crumbles. Lay crumble have to much calcium for ducklings.

-Kathy

 

[casportpony]

I raise hundreds of ducklings every year and to date have not seen any side effects from feeding medicated feed. Only ducklings of mine that have died, died before they started eating from yolk sac infections. Some ducklings I sell at a young age, others I grow out and sell at six months.

-Kathy

 

[Buck Oakes]

In all my time raising waterfowl I have given them scratch. Its only to keep them from starving from morning. Same thing with my broody chickens. When they hatch babies they get a handful if scratch a day and forage for the rest with their babies.

babies can't have scratch t least its not recommended because it can hurt their crop, and these aren't chickens. Ducklings anatomy is not the same as a chicks so.....

 

[casportpony]

Quote: Scratch doesn't have the right nutrients for ducklings. How is their anatomy different?

-Kathy

 

[casportpony]

Duck:

1. Oesophagus
2. Crop
3. Proventriculus
4. Gizzard
5. Pancreas
6. Duodenum
7. Liver
8. Gallbladder
9. Ileum
10. Caecum
11. Cloaca

-Kathy

 

[casportpony]

Chicken:

-Kathy

 

[Buck Oakes]

Scratch doesn't have the right nutrients for ducklings. How is their anatomy different?

-Kathy

I'm not sure but I've read somewhere that chickens have a larger more prominent crop for compacting and breaking down more difficult things, while ducklings cops aren't in full affect for a few days and don't do well with difficult things till they are older.

 

[casportpony]

 
Scratch doesn't have the right nutrients for ducklings. How is their anatomy different?

-Kathy

I'm not sure but I've read somewhere that chickens have a larger more prominent crop for compacting and breaking down more difficult things, while ducklings cops aren't in full affect for a few days and don't do well with difficult things till they are older.

Chickens have a different shaped crop, which you can see in the pictures above. As I understand it, food is stored in the crop, then digestion with acids begins in the proventriculas, then moves into the gizzard where it is ground up with a little help from small rocks/grit.

-Kathy

 

[Buck Oakes]

oh, then wrong thing entirely

oh well

 

[casportpony]

From:
http://www.exoticpetvet.net/avian/anatomy.html
"The digestive system has some unique avian features. We have already talked about the crop, the outpouching of the esophagus. The esophagus connects to the crop and then travels through the bones at the top of the keel. The esophagus then connects to the stomach. The avian stomach is unique. The first portion of it is called theproventriculus, and this is the part with glands in it that secretes gastric juice. The second part of the stomach is called the ventriculus, or gizzard, and it is where digested proteins are broken down and where grinding occurs."

-Kathy