The right food?

[floricik]

Hey y’all!

We have 4 hens, about 19 weeks old, and two rescued ducklings, 4 weeks old.
Planing on moving the ducklings in with the chickens. (They have been socializing a bit and I hope they are going to get along )
Is it ok to feed both, the hens and ducklings purina brand? We also add brewer’s east in their feed.
Right now, hens are on Dumor 16% layer crumble and ducklings on Purina flock raiser.

mixed with their feed

 

[Brooks_]

I have no experience with ducks or added B vitamins for chickens, but my chickens do well on flock raiser and oyster shell, on the side, for layers.

 

[floricik]

I have no experience with ducks or added B vitamins for chickens, but my chickens do well on flock raiser and oyster shell, on the side, for layers.

We let the chickens free range most of the day. A neighbor told me that they should not need oyster shells. Is it accurate?

 

[Brooks_]

We let the chickens free range most of the day. A neighbor told me that they should not need oyster shells. Is it accurate?

Depends on the calcium in the environment. Mine barely touch the OS, but it's cheap enough to leave for them anyway.

 

[CluckerFamily]

I’m not sure about the chickens eating brewers yeast. I have my chickens separate from my ducklings, I didn’t want any possible drakes mating with my hens and killing them.

 

[GC-Raptor]

We have 4 hens, about 19 weeks old, and two rescued ducklings, 4 weeks old.
Planing on moving the ducklings in with the chickens. (They have been socializing a bit and I hope they are going to get along )
Is it ok to feed both, the hens and ducklings purina brand? We also add brewer’s east in their feed.
Right now, hens are on Dumor 16% layer crumble and ducklings on Purina flock raiser.

Yes, it's OK to feed the Purina Flock Raiser to all. You need to supply Calcium/Oyster Shells in a separate container for the egg layers.
Flock Raiser has enough Niacin if you don't feed the Ducks anything else. Brewers Yeast should be fine for the chickens in proper amounts for Ducklings.

We let the chickens free range most of the day. A neighbor told me that they should not need oyster shells. Is it accurate?

No, chickens should have Oyster Shells available even if you feed them a Layers feed. Free Ranging, or if you give treats could shortchange them on Calcium if they don't consume enough Layers feed.
4 Ducks can live with chickens if only one is a Drake or all are female.
My mom had ducks and chickens together. But of course there can be exceptions. So keep an eye on them as they get older. GC

 

[floricik]

Yes, it's OK to feed the Purina Flock Raiser to all. You need to supply Calcium/Oyster Shells in a separate container for the egg layers.
Flock Raiser has enough Niacin if you don't feed the Ducks anything else. Brewers Yeast should be fine for the chickens in proper amounts for Ducklings.

No, chickens should have Oyster Shells available even if you feed them a Layers feed. Free Ranging, or if you give treats could shortchange them on Calcium if they don't consume enough Layers feed.
4 Ducks can live with chickens if only one is a Drake or all are female.
My mom had ducks and chickens together. But of course there can be exceptions. So keep an eye on them as they get older. GC

Thanks for the info! We only have 2 ducklings, can’t tell yet if we got a drake. I am guessing the dark gray could be a drake.
Now, how do we encourage the ducklings to “come out of their shell “? We put them in the same run with the chickens last night. Today they only come out of the duck house when we are in the run with them then when we leave they go in.

 

[3KillerBs]

A drake in with hens can be dangerous to them.

Hormonal drakes in breeding season will try to mate with anything vaguely duck-like (I've personally seen a wild mallard attempting to make with a rubber boot while someone was wearing it). The problem is that drakes have a penis while roosters do not, thus hens are not designed the same internally as ducks and can be horribly injured.