Quote:
"Also, who all in here keeps chickens with ducks and other fowl successfully? I'm having a debate right now about whether it can be done. I'm staring out at my backyard right now where ducks, chickens, a goose, and guineas are living and free ranging in harmony, as they have been for the last seven years I've had them, and I'm being told that you can't do that because it will cause disease and injuries. So do I just have a really weird setup that has somehow worked for this whole time or does everyone else manage to mix fowl too? I've just been told it's against common sense to keep them together and that telling people they can is spreading misinformation, so I just want to check here if I'm actually wrong on this before I keep telling people you can do it. I know turkeys and chickens are considered a bad idea if your area has blackhead, but I never considered that ducks, chickens, and guineas shouldn't be kept together unless the drake starts trying to mate with the chickens or something."
I keep everything together. Guinea fowl, chickens, chicks, ducks, ducklings.....there are problems....the ducks make a HUGE mess of the coop. (I won't house them together for the winter cuz their poop is so wet it freezes, not dries, like chicken poo) The Guinea fowl are mean to the chickens. The drake does try to mount the chickens, however I did hatch 19 ducklings this past spring, so he is doing his real job in addition to chicken duty.
BUT they all are alive, laying eggs, growing up, laying more eggs and going broody. Soooo....regardless of the "problems" with the mixed species, they are doing what birds are supposed to do. And they are all happy, as birds go. Pecking for food and running toward me when I enter the driveway or open the back door.
I don't have turkeys. No reason, except I think turkeys are ugly and huge and I don't have a pot big enough to dunk them to pluck them if I butcher them. So I have no idea if blackhead is a problem in my area.
Oh and I have hatched chickens too, so even tho the drake thinks he's a chicken sometimes, the roosters are taking a turn often enough to yeild fertile eggs for hatching.
