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I've got three ducks. Actually started out with Ducks before Chickens. I live in a residential area as well so it was sorta touch and go as far as neighbors are concerned at first (even though our city ordinance allows 2). However my neighbors LOVE our ducks. The kids all come over to see them all the time. I've got 2 females and a male. The females are a Cayuga and a Swedish Mix, and the male is a Black Swedish. My females can be noisy but usually only in the day when they see someone, they like to tell people "here I am!" they also got a lot quieter after their first year.
Some notes about ducks -
1. They are messy. Waaaay messy. They poop all the time. In fact my chickens are so much easier to clean up after that it shocked me when I got chickens how easy they are to clean up after. Ducks don't require a pond to live but are much happier if they have one. We used a kiddy plastic sandbox this last year but I'm going to put a duck pond into the run this year as while it worked it was a pain in the butt to dump and made the run all sorts of messy.
2. Egg production is good! My ducks are both still laying. The production has dropped down where we only get one egg a day from the two but we NEVER miss a day. It's been 120 days since we missed an egg from at least one. In the spring, summer, fall we always had two eggs 6 out of 7 days. My wife loves the duck eggs and they are the BEST to bake with.
3. I keep my ducks and chickens in the same run but it's fairly large. Just make sure if you do that you have an area dedicated to the ducks water (the need water they can wash their bills in at least even if you don't have some sort of swimming water for them) that is away from the chickens coop.
4. My ducks would only go into my coop to mess things up for the chickens. By mess I mean poop. And by poop I mean ALL OVER THE PLACE. It was a pain to clean out. So I made the ramp into the coop to small for them to waddle up and gave them a little plastic dog house to go into should they need to get out of the weather. That said I've only seen them use it once to get out of the weather. Ducks are crazy and LOVE the sown and rain. Anytime it rains and I have the pond out and they RUN for it as fast as they can . . . and then have as much sex as they can.
5. They eat a lot. My three ducks probably eat as much as 5-6 chickens. It's not a big deal in the summer when I can let them forage in my backyard but this winter I've been going through a lot of feed.
All that said my ducks are probably 100x more entertaining then my chickens. Especially in the water. Buying feeder goldfish and putting then in the pond is one of the most hilarious things you will ever see. They are a lot more work in some ways, but in others not as much; you don't really need to worry too much about a coop (like I said dog house works great) and they winter so much better then chickens. We are hoping to hatch some ducklings in the spring too!
Oh also I wouldn't consider putting 1 male and 1 female in there, you'd need at least one more female. I'm pushing it with a 2 to 1 ratio as it is. If you only have one female the male WILL most likely hurt her or hurt your chickens. Male ducks are very . . . needy.
wow thank you so much for the reply! you know a lot about ducks for sure! i have a lot of thinking to do and your info is very helpful. thanks!