new with both ducks and chickens

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debeberling

debeberling

Hatching
Apr 10, 2015
7
0
7
Hi, my husband and 3 daughters have decided to get our feet wet and raise chickens and ducks. Our chicks are due to arrive May 18th and we got our ducks 2 weeks ago from Tractor Supply. They were a little more spur of the moment. Right now they are growing like crazy and have almost outgrown the brooder. They were hatched March 30th. There are 4 pekins and 5 roewen. Right now they are in the basement and next week temps drop into the 30's overnight so I am starting to panic as to where they are going to be safe and warm. We are in the process of setting up our outside coop and were hoping to get the ducks out there. I don't want to separate them into two brooders as I want them to stay used to each other. Between preparing for these and building an enclosure 6 feet high for the mustangs that my daughter wants to TIP train, it is a very busy time for us. We are looking forward to our new adventure though!!
 
Hi :welcome

Glad you could join the flock! Yes it does seem that you are rather busy there!! How old are your ducks? If you still have them under a heat lamp I think they should be warm enough. Drop by the duck section of the forum for all the expert advice though. Here is the link https://www.backyardchickens.com/f/42/ducks
I have a friend trying to get me to incubate some duck eggs but I have resisted so far. Ducklings are super cute but I'm not sure I could deal with the mess they make with water. How have you found yours?

Wishing you the very best of luck with them and your impending chicks.
Enjoy BYC :frow
 
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Hello :frow and Welcome To BYC! You can also split the ducklings into two or more brooders and just switch some of them around every day or so, so they all stay used to each other.
 
The ducklings are 18 days so they are still under the heat lamp but it is up a little bit off of the brooder. Our basement isn't heated but they are in a room that has a space heater which is now off because it holds its heat fairly well. They are loving the water. We have 2 open bowls so they jump and play and splash and just have a great time. We are going to use an old kids pool and build them a pond once we have them outside. For now we water them a lot and they are noisy the minute they run out so it is very interesting having them in the house.
 
I hadn't thought about that but I will have to have my girls do that. I didn't realize how quickly they would grow so every morning I go down and give them water before I leave for work and it seems like they grow a lot each night. Hopefully after next week the overnight lows will go up a little bit so we can move them outside. I think they will enjoy a bigger space. In addition we won't have to feed hay to the horses which also reduces night time chores.
 

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