o kay gone start a few species specific sections now,
TEAL
To me, these were always some of my favorites, guess it was their small size and wide array of colors. There are tons of different teal species out there all equally beautiful in their own rights and come from about every continent in the world.
They also boast the smallest species of waterfowl in the world, the HottenTot ,it;ll fit in the palm of a mans hand, oh about 5 inches long or so when standing.
Most all teal are ground nesters, some will go both ways though, ring, Sharpe winged, chestnut breasted, and baikal were the only 4 species I ever had to use a box, rings almost always did. So if you get ring teal, do give them a wood duck style nesting box. Mine were always 18 inches tall, by 12 inches square, about 3/4 of the way up, put an oval shaped hole 3 inches tall 4 inches wide. (for goldeneyes, add an inch both directions). aside from them, a good grassy, or other wise well covered area of the pen will be perfect for teal nesting.
They do well on any prepared ration, a game bird style feed is best, and as I have mentioned before they love catfish food!
They do graze well on grass, so dont plan on keeping too much of that, after 1 season, it'll be gone unless you have a huge aviary. I always planted pampas grass and tuff ornamental grass like that in their pens, it works great for nesting too.
Of the teal species, the blue wing, green wing, falcated, cinnamon, baikal, gargany, and laysan I know are on the USFWS Permit list, most all the others are free of Federal papers.
Teal do get along great in a community style aviary and despite their common appearances, very seldom will inter breed, in fact I never had a teal cross and I had all of mine in one big community pen. This is not to say they wont or cant, but if properly paired they usually dont.
Some of the hens do take a trained eye to tell apart, the cinnamon and blue wing for instance. They make wood duck and mandarins easy. If you get into these, the wing bars are the simplest way to tell, cinnamons will have a mass of blue where the blue wing will mainly just have the blue wing bars, also a cinnamon has a longer bill.
Baikals will resemble green wings in eclipse plumage, but they are a good bit larger and always will have a white dot at the base of the bill on their face, where greenwings wont.
The other species arent too bad. But many do have identical colored sexes, so you will have to get good at vent sexing, which I'll out line later.
Marbled, cape, and a few others are this way. Hottentots are close but different if you look close enough. The males back tail and head "cap" will be black where the hens will be dark chocolate in color.
Most all species of teal are in full color and breeding by their second year, some will lay their first like the rings, but it has been my experience with them to give them at least 2-3 years on all waterfowl before you give up. Also, they love a well landscaped aviary, plain open barren pens dont cut it for any migratory waterfowl.
Logs, planted shrubs and trees, large stacks of stone around the ponds, anything to break up the pen and give them cover goes a long way in getting them to produce better.
One thing with teal is, they are small and very docile (baikals excluded they can hold their own) So watch them in mixed community pens, most all waterfowl are o kay, but some species of tree ducks are bullies, especially the Cubans, and all species of shelducks are to be watched closely. Shelducks should really be in their own per pair pens, but I'll get to them a little later.
Teal in most species will lay 4-10 eggs per clutch, hottentots 2-5. Most incubate fairly easily if you follow basic incubation guide lines, and as long as they arent disturbed, most hens make good broody moms. If you are pulling the eggs for incubation, on a lot of the species you can get 2-3 clutches per year per hen, especially the more prolific types like ringed, marbles, and such. They dry or wet brood easily , the starter chick and meal worms can be used to get them to start eating, but they usually dont take much encouragement. Be cautions with them in a brooder. Most are super tiny when hatched so dont put them in with older over sided ducklings, especially hottentots, best to keep the sized equally so they dont get trampled or bullied away from food and water.
Forgot to add about climate conditions. Most species of teal can take the harshest winter conditions you can throw at them, and really need no winter protection. Some of the tropical species do though, the hottentot, silver, puna, and brazilian are the ones that come to mind. All can take any summer heat with ease, just give them a little shade in the aviary and you're good to go.
