To Duck or not to Duck - Nearby Neighbors

[Colley12]

I agree with the noise and mess. I have runners that were new to me this summer. I have a duck house and then they free range in our yard all day. Our lawn is destroyed.....it wasn't so bad until our wet winter. The mud holes, perfectly beak sized that began to litter the yard. We will be replanting our yard here at the end of February, beginning of March. They will be sectioned off to one side of the house that they hang out alot in anyways. And they poop....alot! We have an easy deck to hose off, so we do that frequently...but yes they are pretty messy.

Mine are only loud when they know treats are coming, first thing in the morning and in the afternoon. Otherwise, it is more of a chatter. I haven't had any complaints from the neighbors...they probably think it's crazy and maybe cool to hear ducks in the neighborhood but no one is bothered by them, or at least has told me they are.

After all that, I LOVE my ducks!!! Absolutely love them, they have such a personality and love interacting with us and we can't even hold ours...getting closer with petting, hoping to work up to holding.

My husband even loves them, despite their mess, which says alot since I was the one pushing for them.

 Good luck with your purchase and start up! So much good info on this website!

 

[AmeliaBedelia]

I agree with the noise and mess. I have runners that were new to me this summer. I have a duck house and then they free range in our yard all day. Our lawn is destroyed.....it wasn't so bad until our wet winter. The mud holes, perfectly beak sized that began to litter the yard. We will be replanting our yard here at the end of February, beginning of March. They will be sectioned off to one side of the house that they hang out alot in anyways. And they poop....alot! We have an easy deck to hose off, so we do that frequently...but yes they are pretty messy.

Mine are only loud when they know treats are coming, first thing in the morning and in the afternoon. Otherwise, it is more of a chatter. I haven't had any complaints from the neighbors...they probably think it's crazy and maybe cool to hear ducks in the neighborhood but no one is bothered by them, or at least has told me they are.

After all that, I LOVE my ducks!!! Absolutely love them, they have such a personality and love interacting with us and we can't even hold ours...getting closer with petting, hoping to work up to holding.

My husband even loves them, despite their mess, which says alot since I was the one pushing for them.

 Good luck with your purchase and start up! So much good info on this website!

Also considering ducks. I don’t want to hijack the thread, so hopefully OP is okay with this, but do you have any pictures of your destroyed lawn? Just wondering since my mother in law’s idea of “destroyed” would include our current back yard, because we have dogs who dig some, etc. Like are free-ranging ducks (in a 1/4 acre fenced area) going to be worse than chickens and dogs?

Also, are there breeds that are happy with a kiddie pool? Or would all need to be on a lake or something? We would be converting a chicken setup if we decided on ducks.

 

[Chipmunk Chicks]

Also considering ducks. I don’t want to hijack the thread, so hopefully OP is okay with this, but do you have any pictures of your destroyed lawn? Just wondering since my mother in law’s idea of “destroyed” would include our current back yard, because we have dogs who dig some, etc. Like are free-ranging ducks (in a 1/4 acre fenced area) going to be worse than chickens and dogs?

Also, are there breeds that are happy with a kiddie pool? Or would all need to be on a lake or something? We would be converting a chicken setup if we decided on ducks.

A kiddie pool is fine, but they are hard to drain and fill because they get so darn heavy when full. We have a smaller tub which still is a pain because it gets dirty immediately and I can't leave the *hose out in the winter, so I'm drawing buckets a couple times a day for them. But at least I can easily lift and dump it out when it's time to freshen it up.

In a word, YES. Ducks are worse on a lawn than dogs and chickens. Ymmv, but it's only a matter of time before you are having to reseed parts of the lawn nearest to where the bathe, splash, and root. Farmers rotate pasture. You only have one yard.

 

[Chipmunk Chicks]

FWIW, I'm not telling you you shouldn't get ducks. I'm just telling you what I wish someone would have told us before we got them.​

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Because everyone said, oh you've got chickens, you should get ducks, too! Sure their needs are a little different, they need more water etc they can be messy. But they absolutely did not say, they are a lot more work and kind of a whole new level of farm animal.​

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Friends of ours who have always had chickens and horses and went and added (a couple) ducks have a whole farm for everyone to explore, and are used to filling buckets and buckets of water all day. You may not be in the same position. Another friend of ours with an even bigger farm is not doing ducks this year because predation and the PITA factor, they decided it was just not worth it for them. And they have ACRES to work with.​

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Ultimately you are going to do what you want, but at least you may have your eyes a little more open than we did. My husband is the first to say he wishes we hadn't gotten them, but he was the one initially saying how cute they are! lol​

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At least we've started getting duck eggs by now, but anyway, we'll see how it goes with the ducking going forward. It's just easier said than done, that's all. You can do all the research and try your best to get set up appropriately and prepared, but you'll still want to remain flexible. We've had to adapt our setup a few times already and I'm sure we're not done yet... Says the girl who's currently crawling into the duck hut every morning and carrying them back and forth to the enclosure every day and night. ​

 

[Chipmunk Chicks]

Hmmm. Definitely seeing pros and cons. What attracted me initially is:

1. Could get naturally flightless breeds. 1/4 of our fence is only about 4ft high, and I had to add and repare netting to keep the chickens in that section. So if we go back to chickens (had to take a break due to a health thing thats resolved), thinking the fence would need an upgrade. And a simple baby gate could keep them off the deck stairs and deck.

2. No scratching/dust baths everywhere. We have some blueberry bushes that the chickens kept trying to murder that we had to fence and then unfence to get at the berries and then immediately re-fence…but it’s just a few bushes so a whole permanent fence and gate seemed dumb.

3. Pest control. The chickens helped with this too, but not whatever attacked my squash. (Do ducks eat fleas and ticks? the chickens DID seem to help with that?)

4. Cuteness, no pecking, potential for a male if we decided to breed (roosters are banned here).

5. Fewer diseases.

6. More steady egg production and more nutritious eggs.


Cons seem to mostly be:

1. Mess

2. Changing water all the time

3. Noise (does anyone know the decibel level of a quack vs a cluck vs an egg “song”?! Would love to know how much more annoying they could be compared to hens)

. I am probably overthinking this. Maybe we should just try it with the idea that perhaps we rehome them.

Ohhh last thing - can you even get sexed ducklings? I don’t see them online, but aren’t some breeds pretty reliable to sex by beak color? I don’t want to end up with multiple boys to process. Which is also technically not allowed unless I go to my friend’s farm to do it.

Yes, you can get them sexed. Different sites might have different availability that way, and different breeds may be more or less reliable. We started with a drake and three females. We recently lost our male, but Metzers would replace him at no charge. We have up to a year to decide if we want to even go ahead with that though, since we still have the three females. When I was initially looking though, for example Cackle only had Magpies SR. No idea why. But most breeds are available sexed. I would include in your research breeds that continue to lay over the winter, like our Welsh Harlequins will, but not all might.

Decibels??? No idea. Loud quacks might still be quieter than a Welsummer eggsong but who knows lol

 

[BabyGotQuack]

Hmmm. Definitely seeing pros and cons. What attracted me initially is:

1. Could get naturally flightless breeds. 1/4 of our fence is only about 4ft high, and I had to add and repare netting to keep the chickens in that section. So if we go back to chickens (had to take a break due to a health thing thats resolved), thinking the fence would need an upgrade. And a simple baby gate could keep them off the deck stairs and deck.

2. No scratching/dust baths everywhere. We have some blueberry bushes that the chickens kept trying to murder that we had to fence and then unfence to get at the berries and then immediately re-fence…but it’s just a few bushes so a whole permanent fence and gate seemed dumb.

3. Pest control. The chickens helped with this too, but not whatever attacked my squash. (Do ducks eat fleas and ticks? the chickens DID seem to help with that?)

Not sure if ducks eat fleas & ticks, we’ve got grasshoppers bad here and they love those!

4. Cuteness, no pecking, potential for a male if we decided to breed (roosters are banned here).

5. Fewer diseases.

6. More steady egg production and more nutritious eggs.

Not gonna lie I HATE chickens for serval reasons, a lot of them you listed. Hands down when it comes to chickens vs. ducks I’m picking ducks, even knowing how messy and what pains in the butt they are.

Cons seem to mostly be:

1. Mess

2. Changing water all the time

Yes they are very messy, I only do pool water once a day. Their water buckets in the coop I only have to do a couple times a week

3. Noise (does anyone know the decibel level of a quack vs a cluck vs an egg “song”?! Would love to know how much more annoying they could be compared to hens)

Not sure on the decibel level, but I’ve had chickens who love to egg song and I have ducks who love to hear themselves talk. The majority of my ducks I would say are quieter than a typical chicken egg song. But I have 3 LOUD MOUTH DUCKS! But it’s not something that’s happening all day long. It’s usually when they’re excited or need something. Every once in a while I can hear them in the coop at night but again it’s not all night. A couple quacks and then back to silent. Drakes on the other hand are super quiet! I find chicken noises super annoying, but I love hearing the ducks quacking, so does my husband.

. I am probably overthinking this. Maybe we should just try it with the idea that perhaps we rehome them.

Rehoming is hard, atleast in my area. I don’t know if I would go into it with the idea of rehoming. This is gonna be an unpopular opinion but I would consider a duck dinner in that case pleas nobody burn me at the stake

Ohhh last thing - can you even get sexed ducklings? I don’t see them online, but aren’t some breeds pretty reliable to sex by beak color? I don’t want to end up with multiple boys to process. Which is also technically not allowed unless I go to my friend’s farm to do it.

Yes you can get sexed ducklings. I use metzer farms and have been super happy with them! I haven’t ever seen sexed ducklings at feed stores such as TSC, it’s just a gamble.

The only breed I know of that is sex linked by beak are welsh harlequins and I know it’s not 100%. In my case of the 3 I have it was accurate. But I think there’s lots of variables to go along with that.

 

[BabyGotQuack]

Huh. I had read the eggs usually didn’t taper off until at least year 3. Sad day - that was one of my “pros” over chickens.

I have a khaki who is 3 (I think) and she is still a reliable layer, winter aside.

 

[BabyGotQuack]

Hmmm. Then maybe for my neighbors’ sake I need to go back to the hens idea. They were fine with the hens before; not sure if they’d feel the same about quacks. Sad.

What breed were you thinking? I know calls like @Aunt Angus mentioned are loud! My pekin is my loudest. I’ve heard that a lot, that pekins are loud. My other 2 loud mouths are Saxonys. Not sure if quack volume is breed related or personality related. My flock SEEMS to me to be breed related.

My khaki, welshies & Cayugas I rarely even hear quack and when they do it’s quiet.

 

[Aunt Angus]

Hmmm. Then maybe for my neighbors’ sake I need to go back to the hens idea. They were fine with the hens before; not sure if they’d feel the same about quacks. Sad.

Shoot - if you CAN legally have ducks, then have ducks! I can legally have any kind of livestock. My neighbors are far enough away that it doesn't really matter, but if they were closer, they would have to tolerate the noise because of the ordinances.

 

[Colley12]

This was November....the grass use to be green all up to the duck on the left. That is a low spot in our yard...means puddles, standing water...which means ducks favorite place...

December...the green is slowing fading into brown spots where the ducks mostly walk...
I don't have a pic of this week, but imagine probaly 90% brown now with not much green left.

We will be fencing ducks off to the side of the house where their house is, not pictured. While we reseed and put drainage along the fence to help with the standing water, bad drainage we deal with.

We hope to sell our house this spring/summer and move onto acreage. That was always the plan, just didn't realize the ducks could do so much lawn damage in a short time frame...but we still love them and have a plan...so I think just be prepared and you will be okay!

Also the quacking from mine are only loud when they get treats or are hungry. My females really "QUACK, QUACK, QUACK" about 3 or 4 quacks and then they quiet down. All during waking hrs...I think if it doesn't fall in "quiet time" 10pm to 7am ish, I feel like people have nothing to complain about. Especially since they don't quack all day. Most of the mid morning and afternoon they sleep right back the back door and make no noise lol!

I don't have the dark one anymore (too many drakes), just down to 3

Edit: to add....flies, be prepared for flies in the summer....being mid winter I totally forgot about that...