would a duck live well with chickens

[sydney13]

i was thinking of getting a cayuga duck to live with my 5 chickens. do you think they would be fine if they were all raised together? do cayugas get noisy, and do you think it would annoy close by neighbors? i have a metal basin that i could use for the duck so do you think it would be best in the run or out during the day when they are free range? And which breed would you get, cayuga, blue swedish, or a rouen if i wanted a docile quite and good laying duck?

 

[Amiga]

I know a fellow with a blue Swedish, and he just loves her. Good layer, quiet, good personality, lives happily with chickens.

Sometimes I don't quite follow - what is the metal basin for? Brooding? It's been a long day, and I would like to offer to help you out but I am just not picturing this. (I blame it on the ducks.)

 

[sydney13]

Quote:
i was thinking i would use the basin for the duck to swim in

 

[Amiga]

Oh, okay. Well, there is some discussion about whether galvanized metal leaches enough metals into water to be a concern. As far as size goes, ducks do pretty well as long as they can thoroughly was their whole heads, to avoid eye and sinus and respiratory infections.

I use a couple of concrete mixing pans. They are plastic, not my favorite material, but I decided to go with them instead of galvanized. My in-laws have promised me a fiberglass pond liner they no longer use, but I have not had time to travel to PA to pick it up (duck duty, ya know).

One thing chicken-duck people all seem to point out is that the chickens`water needs to be out of reach of the duck(s). Ducks make a royal mess in their water - but I don`t get annoyed, because I have never seen more happy, enthusiastic, cheerful beings. They just love water and playing in it, dropping things into it (never fails - I always find at least one hickory nut when I clean out their pans, but I don't know where they are finding them

)

 

[gryeyes]

I have a pair of Cayugas, they're 13, maybe 14 weeks old now. They live with the rest of my chickens just fine. They chose to go into the chicken coop with the chickens at night, all on their own, after a couple weeks of trying different places to sleep. For a while they went into the enclosed pen under the A-frame coop (which I lock up at night), but then they decided that brand new coop was a great place to sleep.

They're really very quiet; only the female actually quacks. She quacks three times when she sees me come towards the run, and both ducks waddle with the chickens rushing to the gate to greet me. Occasionally, throughout the day, if something startles her or she is jostling with the chickens, she'll quack once or twice. The rest of the time, the two of them just ducky gabble to each other.

Here's everybody as they were Free Ranging outside of the run last weekend.

 

[stumble_n_mumble]

i have a pekin, blue swedish, and a runner living with 3 silkies and a japanese. they all get along great! but i dont have a swimming pool with all of them in the run because i had an issue with a silkie falling in

so now i have it out where they free range and its working awesome. haven't come close to having another issue. soon to work on a pen for the ducks to go in during the day with a built in pond that the chickens can't get to.

 

[stumble_n_mumble]

btw my swedish all of a sudden is REALLY LOUD. she doesnt shut up sometimes. the egg is almost the same size as the pekin though but my birds are just for pets (we rarely eat eggs here). anyway lol.... she is just really loud!

 

[tigerrrrrrrlilly]

My blue swedes tend to be quieter than my cayugas and my mallards are really loud. They all get along just fine with my chickens which are tiny bantams and one Barred Rock. The one thing you have to be careful of is your chickens falling in the pool and drowning. This has happened to me before and I think they are more interested in it when they see the ducks playing in there. Keep shallow water!

 

[ChickzGirl229]

Is it harder to take care of ducks than it is chickens?

 

[HeritageGoose13]

Ducks are messier, but they also have less problems with parasites or disease, so I would say they are not harder to care for than chickens.