Plants that can grow faster than my ducks can eat them. Difficulty: Texas

[DanielleInUro]

I’m a big fan of yarrow. Soft and ferny foliage. Medical properties to heal wounds. Ducks feet are their weakness. Tough as nails and spreads like crazy. Pretty flowers. They won’t eat it in my experience, at all. Not forage.
Chicory, pretty blue flowers, they graze on the leaves, but don’t wipe out. super easy to grow from seed.
Collard greens, chard, sorrel, water cress(spicy, don’t eat much and good in wet areas, broad leaf better than curly.), borage, dicondra, and Jonny jump ups are all easy to grow from scattering seed. Buy in bulk, those tiny packages are a rip off.

This is a big help! Where do you usually buy your seed?

 

[DanielleInUro]

You could always grow your own sod squares. We did it for my daughter's wedding.

Two ways to do it. Get some of those big turkey roasting pans made out of toss away aluminum, poke holes for drainage, dirt, seed, put someplace the ducks can't get to it until it grows a good root mat. Second way is to get a cheap bag of potting soil, cut an H in it (like the tiny boxes of cereal), fold the flaps back, use a skewer to poke holes, seed. Once you have a good root mat in it, you can lift it, leaving some dirt and do it again.

I will ABSOLUTELY try this.

 

[Foster's Freehold]

I will ABSOLUTELY try this.

Make sure you keep an eye on watering. Grass takes a lot especially if it is windy.

 

[noregerts]

At the end of winter this year, my nine ducks had reduced the "duck" section of my back yard (around 2/3rds, fenced) to a filthy, stinking mud hole. I'm on my second 50 pound bag of grass seed since February, and we are winning. The duck yard has a thin layer of grass covering most of it, with some mulch shoveled over the gross clay mud/dirt and the beginnings of grass starting there, too.

Yes, the ducks trample the grass. Yes, they eat half the seed we put down. It's worth it to have my ducks not constantly squelching around in mud, worried half to death about botulism and never able to sit out there without galoshes. If that means forty bucks every other month for grass seed, then so be it. They're pets rather than livestock, and the joy I get out of those stupid little jerks makes it worth it.

However...does anyone know a better way? I'm not talking about mulch paths or pebbles, I want a carpet of green. But I don't care if that green is grass or something else. We've got regular ground plus a system of trenches around the fruit trees that I also need to be careful about, it's all clay soil with a thin but growing level of duck poo, hay, and mulch, and this is our second year of ducks.

Yes, I thought of kudzu, but beyond the fact that it's less illegal to grow pot (which my ducks would also eat, and who wants super high ducks talking about the universe and their parents?), I'm just not that irresponsible.

Who has suggestions on things I could broadcast widely to keep up with the ducks? Must not be toxic to ducks, because I guess that would be ONE way to solve my ducks-eating-the-lawn-problem, but it seems extreme. Must be duck-edible, because I'm still not going to mow the duck yard. And must be able to outpace the ducks. Also, 110 degree days are coming. I am willing to water it.

 

[noregerts]

How’s this going? Do you still have your ducks? I am a chicken gal with four young ducks now, two Pekin drakes (grrrrr) and a Khaki Campbell pair. I really want to let them out to wander and find bugs but my husband is trying so hard to fill in some bare spots with grass, I really don’t want the ducks to eat it.
BTW I hate it when ducks get high and talk about their parents .

 

[DuckyDonna]

How’s this going? Do you still have your ducks? I am a chicken gal with four young ducks now, two Pekin drakes (grrrrr) and a Khaki Campbell pair. I really want to let them out to wander and find bugs but my husband is trying so hard to fill in some bare spots with grass, I really don’t want the ducks to eat it.
BTW I hate it when ducks get high and talk about their parents .

Hey, I have a very large run (40' x 50') and most of it used to be grass until the auger tore it all up. So what I did was block off areas of my run and planted plain old Kentucky 31 grass seed. When it was looking good and really established I let them have that area and blocked off another. I'm fixin' to block off another area probably tomorrow.

I think once the grass takes hold it will be ok and come back. When we put in all the 4 x 4's for the roof posts it dug every blade of grass up and turned our whole run into dirt. It's getting there with the grass but it takes time.

 

[LaChicaLoca]

At the end of winter this year, my nine ducks had reduced the "duck" section of my back yard (around 2/3rds, fenced) to a filthy, stinking mud hole. I'm on my second 50 pound bag of grass seed since February, and we are winning. The duck yard has a thin layer of grass covering most of it, with some mulch shoveled over the gross clay mud/dirt and the beginnings of grass starting there, too.

Yes, the ducks trample the grass. Yes, they eat half the seed we put down. It's worth it to have my ducks not constantly squelching around in mud, worried half to death about botulism and never able to sit out there without galoshes. If that means forty bucks every other month for grass seed, then so be it. They're pets rather than livestock, and the joy I get out of those stupid little jerks makes it worth it.

However...does anyone know a better way? I'm not talking about mulch paths or pebbles, I want a carpet of green. But I don't care if that green is grass or something else. We've got regular ground plus a system of trenches around the fruit trees that I also need to be careful about, it's all clay soil with a thin but growing level of duck poo, hay, and mulch, and this is our second year of ducks.

Yes, I thought of kudzu, but beyond the fact that it's less illegal to grow pot (which my ducks would also eat, and who wants super high ducks talking about the universe and their parents?), I'm just not that irresponsible.

Who has suggestions on things I could broadcast widely to keep up with the ducks? Must not be toxic to ducks, because I guess that would be ONE way to solve my ducks-eating-the-lawn-problem, but it seems extreme. Must be duck-edible, because I'm still not going to mow the duck yard. And must be able to outpace the ducks. Also, 110 degree days are coming. I am willing to water it.

Maybe try giving them sections to inhabit. Like spit it into halves or quarters and before the grass dies in one area, rotate them to another like this

<--- Sectioned run area
... <-- (coop/house/ect)


And rotate them on a specific time frame or something