Taming Ducklings

[CountyGirl12]

Click the link for video

 

[Kaessa]

Just let them take another swim in the bath tub. They love it!

View My Video

Cute!

 

[CountyGirl12]

Thanks!

 

[circlecsranch]

Awesome thread! I just got 12 Peking Ducklings myself, I'm very new to the farming life. We have chickens, and just hatched 2 batches of eggs. We have 125 head of new chicks coming, including meat chicks and a few turkeys. We have a couple ducks we are going to leg band, we plan on keeping them as pets and hoping if they are female, for eggs as well. My lil monsters are already spoiled rotten, today we plan on letting them go for a swim in the tub.

 

[CountyGirl12]

125! Wow! I'll let me ducks swim everyday, but yesterday was the first time in the tub!

 

[Amykins]

125! Wow! I'll let me ducks swim everyday, but yesterday was the first time in the tub!

First tub day is a big step, hehe! I remember when mine was still tiny enough to swim in the bathroom sink. Ah, memories.

 

[CountyGirl12]

The 3 of mine probably wouldn't fit in our bathroom sink lol

 

[Tevyes Dad]

125! Wow! I'll let me ducks swim everyday, but yesterday was the first time in the tub!

Now your ducklings are the same age as mine were in the video. They can swim in warm water like that real well but they have to be watched 100% of the time that young. Especially now that their water is deeper. That means if you go to the kitchen for more peas, they have to come out, or get someone else to get you more peas instead. They can get tired or make a mistake and drown in an instant (just one breath). Don't want to frighten you just want to avoid tragedy. Like my video shows, I had my ducklings in well over their heads (so they could dive) at 4 weeks, but both my wife and I were in there every instant so if one of them even thought about floundering, we would have yanked it in an instant and we had 4 hands covering 2 ducks. Also they were pretty experienced. They had been started in water at 1 wk (with 100% paranoid supervision) so you can see at 4 weeks, they are staying pretty dry as their preenal glands have started working and they have preened after previous swims. @Amiga has a video of bunches of runners in a shallow tub but in that video 2 people are covering way more ducks plus they are younger. But she also has much less water (only up to their bellys) - That makes sense to me too.

 

[CountyGirl12]

I watch them whenever they go swimming. I have a little tub thing lol but it's getting to small for them. They can't really swim in it. They only swim for 5-10 minutes each time

 

[BigWeenMachine]

If you think it's fun feeding peas to them in a tub, try getting lil feeder fish from your local pet shop. I put 20 of them in the duck pool yesterday and they were gone in a couple of minutes. The ducks love them and it's fun to watch them dive for them.

It has also been raining like crazy the last few days so I have been going out at night with a spotlight and shining it around on the ground for them. The ducks follow me everywhere and gobble up foot long nightcrawlers that are up basking in the rain water. My ducks are only a few weeks old but you'd be amazed at what they can eat and love eating as well.

Other fun snacks are mealworms and smoothies. I blend up smoothies with apples, pears and oranges and they love it. Make sure you take the seeds out of the apples and pears first cos they contain small traces of cyanide which could harm your ducks if they eat too much. And supposedly citrus fruits are bad for them too cos of the acid and stomach issues. I feed mine oranges anyways cos I have read that is a wives tale. In the wild they will gobble up the oranges. Plus, oranges are a staple in peacock diets so I can't imagine it is much different for ducks. If a few of them get stomach aches they'll quit eating it just like I quit eating jalapenos with my heartburn....