My New Flock

DucksAndGardens

Songster
Mar 31, 2015
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These are my new ducklings. I haven't had ducks in several years so I'm happy I have these new guys. They were 3 weeks old on Monday.
I have:
2 cayuga (F,?)
1 Pekin (?)
3 golden 300 (F,F,F)
3 Welsh Harlequin (F,F,M)
1 Black Swedish (F)
1 Blue Swedish. (F)

I think my pekin might be female. I think I heard a quack from her tonight.
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I can honestly say, I've never seen a dog inside a brooder before. lol! I'm sure you already do, but just keep a close eye on them with the dogs so no one gets accidentally injured. Your babies are adorable though, and I love your home-made waterer! :)
 
Yes I watch them closely. My dogs are guarding and herding dogs and this is how I introduce them to the animals. For the ducks it's so the ducks won't panic when they see my dogs and for the dogs it's to get them familiar with their charges. I'm instilling in them that these little guys need to be protected. Also my oldest likes to nip when he herds so I'm teaching him that only a nose in the butt not a nip will send these guys in the right direction. So far everyone has been fine but I won't leave them unsupervised until I'm 100% sure the dogs and ducks are ok with each other.
 
Beautiful mixed flock! I love all the varieties :) we just bought our first flock; i would have loved a mix like this but since egg production is our goal, we got mainly white 300's (with a few Cayugas as they're my favorite :) ).
How large is your flock?
 
There are 11 total, 8 of which are for sure female so I should have plenty of eggs. I have one gosling I'm picking up today to add to the flock so that I have an alarm system if something tries to go after the ducks. Eventually they will free range in my neighbor's field across the street during the day so I want to be able to hear if something bothers them. And a hissing goose will deter neighborhood kids from pestering them. I rent the field from him and grow my garden over there so they will be my bug and slug patrol and my weeders for the garden as well as my egg layers.

At night I will just herd them back home and into my dog run that I converted into a duck run by running wire fencing across the top. The dogs never used the dog run anyway. I built it for when I got my oldest dog almost 5 years ago when he was a puppy and he used it for 2 weeks and then my neighbor "stole" the puppy from his lonely dog run during the day. So now the dogs patrol my house and the neighbor's yard next to me and the ducks will get the field across the street.
 
Sounds like a nice set up. Are you just getting one goose? I've read they do best in pairs....actually metzer will even only sell them that way (i wanted 3 but had to get 4)
 
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I bought one goose from the feedstore. I didn't want to get a pair because I was worried about a gander getting aggressive during mating season and injuring the ducks.
 

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