Putting your ducks to bed

My ducks rarely go into their pen at night. Our chickens B-line for home once dusk comes round, but the ducks are chillin' in the yard til I walk them over to their pen. It's not hard and they'll walk right in a nice little pod of white, but I do have to bring them there at night. And we always feed our ducks at night,so they know a meal's coming--they just don't care when it comes.
 
Our ducks go into our chickens coop and sleep in their whether or not we are their… We are building a new coop just for the ducks and we will hopefully on chase them in their once.. thats what we did to get them in the chicken coop.. also we chased the ducks in the chicken coop once.
 
Mine are good about exiting the coop's ramp, but they don't like going back in. They will go back up easily if you pick them up & put them right at the bottom of the ramp. Of course you have to play a chase game first, which isn't fun.

I'd love to do treats just for ducks but then the chickens & turkeys would get the food first since they're way too food aggressive compared to the ducks. We do put out feed for all the birds every night before bed so they have full crops. Maybe we just need more feeders so the ducks feel less intimidated. Something to ponder for sure.
 
Mine get peas for bedtime treat. No problems with getting them to bed
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Brilliant! Those are some well trained duckies!
 
I am having an enormous amount of trouble getting my 4-month old muscovies back into their pen at night. I hatched one and bought the other at 3 days old and I live on a lot that is on a pond. I have been letting them free range during the day and they have been accepted by the wild flock of 6 or so muscovies that have taken up residence around the pond.

Up until a few days ago, all I had to do was go outside, shake their food bag, say "Come on, ducks!" and they'd come running. Now, they don't come running and when I try to herd them back towards the pen, they do a short hop into the middle of the pond to where I can't get them. There are raccoons in the area, so what I've had to do the past few nights is go out after dark with a flashlight and grab them when they're not paying attention (they are always at the same spot along the water's edge, which happens to be on the opposite bank of my yard) and physically carry them back to the pen. They do not like this and are practically climbing up the walls of the pen trying to get out.

Any suggestions on how I can get my ducks to willingly come home at night? It's simply not safe after dark with all of those raccoons!
 
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You might want to put their pond (if its portable) in their cage so you can close them up
 
wow! I would understand why they don't want to leave the lake... Do ya'll already have a coop? I was just think... Maybe you guys could fence in the water. But that would be way to big of a hassle
 
Any suggestions on how I can get my ducks to willingly come home at night? It's simply not safe after dark with all of those raccoons!
While I was researching coops, I saw that some people who have ponds have floating raft-type structures with shelters on them, attached to a rope or zipline contraption so that they can haul it in from the water to clean it. If the ducks absolutely refuse to come back inland, maybe at least they could have a shelter out on the water that would protect them from predators? I don't know whether raccoons could or would swim out to kill the ducks though :/
 
While I was researching coops, I saw that some people who have ponds have floating raft-type structures with shelters on them, attached to a rope or zipline contraption so that they can haul it in from the water to clean it. If the ducks absolutely refuse to come back inland, maybe at least they could have a shelter out on the water that would protect them from predators? I don't know whether raccoons could or would swim out to kill the ducks though :/
No I wouldn't think that a raccoon would swim there.. Make sure you don't have any snapper turtles they might try and kill them..
 

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