Noob looking for advice.

Date sort Score sort
E

Ejf7000

In the Brooder
Aug 20, 2020
2
18
13
Hi all and thank you for the add.

We are trying to decide between chickens or ducks for eggs. We have VERY limited experience with either so any advice is greatly appreciated.

Let me give you a quick rundown on what we would like to do so that hopefully, you can point me in the right direction.

We live on a large lake in South Carolina and would like to maintain a small flock (4-6) of free-range birds for eggs. We would like to get to the point that we can simply open their pen and allow them to explore the property during the day and lock them back up in the evening. I guess my biggest questions are as follows...

1. Do we have to have a fenced-in free-range area or can we get to the point that we can allow the birds to just explore on their own unsupervised?
2. As we live on a lake with @ 300' of weedy shoreline would ducks or chickens help control the insect population along the shore?
3. We get visited several times a year by flocks of Canadian geese. Any chance our birds would run off with them?
4. Do ducks lay eggs in a nesting box or just wherever they happen to be at the time?

Thanks in advance for the advice!
 
Welcome to BYC.

Just from your post, and what I can tell you're looking to have in a flock of birds, chickens may be better suited for you then ducks, and I say that for a few reasons. Waterfowl, of course, love water, but so do minks, snapping turtles, otter's, the list goes on. I can tell you, without a doubt, there are likely snapping turtles in your pond and they'll eventually kill a few of your ducks yearly unless you trap them religiously throughout the year. With chickens, you will have to deal with aerial predators, land predators, but you won't need to worry about Snappers as much as you would with ducks.

It partly depends on the breed, but ducks do generally tend to lay whenever, and wherever they feel like. Although, In my experience, your heavier set breeds tend to lay in nesting boxes more, and that may be due to their "bred-out" wild instincts unlike your bantam breeds.

Ducks may or may not chase off Geese, it's another variable factor that will vary with each flock, I would guess the chances of them chasing off geese would be low, however.

Both chickens and ducks will do a fairly good job of controlling insect populations.
 
Isaac 0 said:
Welcome to BYC.

Just from your post, and what I can tell you're looking to have in a flock of birds, chickens may be better suited for you then ducks, and I say that for a few reasons. Waterfowl, of course, love water, but so do minks, snapping turtles, otter's, the list goes on. I can tell you, without a doubt, there are likely snapping turtles in your pond and they'll eventually kill a few of your ducks yearly unless you trap them religiously throughout the year. With chickens, you will have to deal with aerial predators, land predators, but you won't need to worry about Snappers as much as you would with ducks.

It partly depends on the breed, but ducks do generally tend to lay whenever, and wherever they feel like. Although, In my experience, your heavier set breeds tend to lay in nesting boxes more, and that may be due to their "bred-out" wild instincts unlike your bantam breeds.

Ducks may or may not chase off Geese, it's another variable factor that will vary with each flock, I would guess the chances of them chasing off geese would be low, however.

Both chickens and ducks will do a fairly good job of controlling insect populations.
Click to expand...
Thank you for the advice! Even though I have not seen any snappers I'm sure we have them I had never even thought about a snapper eating a duck. I was more worried about land and air predators. We have a lot of coyotes and fox in our area but our boxers do a good job keeping them at bay.

I'm a little worried about the boxers as well. They tend to go bezerk when the geese show up. But they have done well with other small animals around the house as long as we introduce them as part of the family.
 

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom