It was something I always looked forward to. I still vividly remember one day after preschool tossing bread to the ducks and leaning so far over the edge I fell in the pond!
Where was I going with this? Oh right — feeding ducks! The wild ducks might love all those bits of stale bread, but they are definitely not good for them. First remember that treats, are just that — treats. For tips on feeding your backyard ducks, click here. Another great source of protein your ducks will love is feeder goldfish or minnows. Add a few of these to their pond or water bowl and stand back because the water will be flying! Other protein snacks to try include plain yogurt and scrambled eggs.
The other treat mine go crazy for is Romaine lettuce. Most days I bring out a head of lettuce to feed the rabbits. They are so cute, I always peel off a few leaves for them. Most types of lettuce are great for them, but avoid Iceberg lettuce as it has limited nutritional value. You can grow lots of healthy treats for your ducks right in your garden.
For information on gardening for your pets, click here. Tear up bits of wheat grass, dandelion greens, or fresh herbs like oregano, rosemary, basil, mint, calendula, or parsley and float them in their water dish or pool. They will have a great time fishing their treats out. The only thing to be aware of is if you are picking things like dandelion greens out of your yard, make sure they have not been treated with any kind of weed killer or pesticide.
Fruits — there are lots of fruits that your ducks will enjoy like tomatoes, chopped grapes, berries, watermelon, cantaloupe and bananas. Almost all fruits are healthy for ducks, fruits that should be avoided include any citrus fruit too much acid for their digestive system and avocados all parts are toxic to birds.
Vegetables — fresh veggies can be fed to your ducks daily, some favorites include corn, peas, beans, cucumber, cabbage and broccoli. Peas are a great natural source of niacin which is important especially when they are young. Grains — warm oatmeal makes a delicious treat on a cold winter morning. Hi Liz: Just found your blog and I love it. I live in the suburbs of Mass with 10 ducks and have been a duck mama for 9 years.
I wanted to share that I make a potpourri of dried herbs mint, lavender, basil, thyme and oregano to sprinkle in the duck house at night. Hi Annie, thanks for stopping by! That duck potpourri sounds awesome — I love using herbs around the coop too! Hi Liz. I have a sad story. I have had 4 beautiful ducks for about a year. They have brought so much joy to my life.
Yesterday my family and I went out for half hour. I was with my daughter when my husband called me to tell me to come home. The ducks were dead. Something had attacked them. I am heartbroken. Whatever it was attacked them in the yard. The ducks ran into their house and died in their house. My poor daisy is all alone now. What can I do to prevent another attack?
Oh no that is terrible!! Birds of prey attack during the day, but the devastation is usually contained to just one bird. Larger predators will attack multiple birds, sometimes just for fun, not even necessarily to eat them. It should have a solid roof and either a wire floor or wire buried 2 feet down along the entire perimeter of the run.
I personally think they are happier have room to free range, unfortunately that just leaves them open to attack. I would suggest you take a walk around the perimeter of your yard.
Did it dig under the fence? Is there a broken panel? If they dug underneath, you can bury hardware cloth wire to stop digging. Providing large bushes can provide cover from hawks. Hanging shiny objects like old CDs around the free range area confuses and repels birds of prey as well. I am sorry your family had to go through this, and for your poor ducks. Any idea why??
Do you put the veggies etc in a little bit of water in a shallow pan maybe?? Any ideas will be appreciated. I have definitely found that my ducks are much pickier about what they eat than my chickens who will eat just about anything I put in front of them.
I think a lot of it has to do with habits. Treats that I introduced rarely or when they were adults they are more skeptical of. They sort of remind me of my kids lol. So just like kids, repeated exposure could be the key to expanding your picky ducks diet. My ducks do love when I chop up greens and float them in their water dish or pool, I have found that is a fun way to introduce new herbs. Treats are not a necessary part of their diet, as long as they as eating plenty of quality feed all their nutritional needs should be being met.
I am new here and planning to do Duck breeding for education and conservation in Botswana, where to start with, how and what are the recommendations, i do have the land where to do the project quiet big and in a wildlife area? That is wonderful! First you will need to determine where you can obtain your breeding stock. I am sorry, I am not sure what is available in Botswana. You will want to set up different pens for the different breeds. If you are raising wild breeds, you will need to clip their wings or keep them in an aviary — unless your plan is to raise them to release into the wildlife area?
A good ratio would be to start out with 6 females and 2 males at the very least. Good luck! I recommend because I struggle with this on a personal level. Good luck. My ducks love standard green flies the kind you often find in your home! If we have flies gathering on manure on the ground they run at the pile with their head lowered and mouth open trying to catch the flies like Hungry Hungry Hippos lol.
But I think ducks are like people, they have different ideas of what tastes good. Mine love thawed frozen peas!! They are cheap not canned peas…to much salt just the frozen ones and let them thaw first!
Good Morning, thanks I Enjoy your information and comments on chickens, ducks and so forth. I have recently started feeding and enjoy watching the birds also free ranging all day. Greetings Sandra. Hi Liz, we are getting ducks that are 3 months old… Love your help with the feeding… Any other tips would be great.
Congrats on your new additions! I would definitely recommend checking out my backyard ducks page, I have lots of articles that I bet you will find helpful!
If you have any questions, you can also email me at info thecapecoop. Hello Liz. They are great and your knowledge and know how gives me hope. They just turned three weeks old today. Love love how they greet me. Question when should I put them out side? Right now they live in a wooden create in the house. Congratulations on your new additions! Ducklings are so much fun so so messy, but so much fun! You should wait until they are fully feathered around weeks and the nighttime temperatures are solidly in the 50s for them to permanently move outside.
But you can bring them out for short field trips to explore the yard with supervision on sunny days now. I have been feeding them defrosted steam in bag corn and peas and the love them! But lately I have been thinking that these are a little boring and I might want to mix it up a little bit. Thanks for the help! How exciting! I would hold off for now with the treats.
I usually wait until they are about a month old for treats. Ugh we are also having an awful year with flies. I have never had such a hard time with them. We doubled the amount of the fly bags, are keeping the grass short less places to hide and mate , and picking up poop twice a day.
I am a new duck mom with four ducks. I have had them inside but they need to go out. I have a temporary pen and house but I need a feeder and waterer that will stay clean. I saw one duck wandering around aimlessly in the grass, like he was trying to cause a distraction. I kept going down toward the pond, though, and there near the edge of the woods, the second male was standing guard while the female was tucked into a nest of dried leaves laying her egg.
I left them be and came back later to look at the nest. They had found a protected spot in between two downed trees, in a pile of dry sycamore leaves, to make a nest. In it were two large eggs. I went up and told my husband: they are nesting! We spoke with our neighbors, who lived in our house many years ago and raised ducks here too. They told us a tale of when their female had built a nest under a pine tree by the pond.
She had laid 12 eggs then began sitting on them. One day a groundhog came, as she had left briefly to get water and ate all the eggs.
Soon after a raccoon killed the mom too. We knew we had to find a way to enclose the nest or at least build the ducks a safe place to nest near the pond. We examined where the ducks had put their nest and determined there was no way to safely fence it in with the huge downed trees on either side.
So we picked a spot nearby, a little closer to the pond, where we could place the duck house and enclose it with a welded wire fence. We hauled the house out of the pond, cut the opening even wider, and put it into place under the willow tree. Next I put in some fresh straw and moved as much of their nest as I could inside, including the two eggs the female had already laid.
Next we worked on fencing. I drove four t-posts into the ground for support. Then we wrapped welded wire around it and held it in place with wire clips. My husband used some scrap metal we had sitting around and welded together a simple gate for the enclosure. We ran more welded wire over the top, using zip ties to hold it all together. Some left over treated wood that we had from building the chicken coop served nicely as a skirt board to help keep digging predators out.
Finally, I put some food and water inside for the ducks. That night we picked up the ducks when they came up to be let into the chicken coop and carried them down to their new home. Again it was time for them to learn a new routine. The next morning, I anxiously came down to see if there was a new egg in the duck house. I found that the female duck had thrown the two eggs I moved out onto the ground, but she had made a new nest of straw at the back of the duck house and in it was a new egg.
I let the ducks out and took the two eggs that she had abandoned. So as the days progressed, we continued to walk the ducks to their new home each night and the female continued to lay eggs in her new nest. Each morning the ducks came out and went straight into the pond.
They are tucked neatly in rows around the edge of the straw nest. We are waiting anxiously to see if the female will start sitting on them soon and perhaps hatch some ducklings. Finally, we feel like we have a home in place for the ducks where their needs are met and they seem happy. Now if we get a new generation of ducklings they will start things off right and learn their routines from the beginning without having to go through so much trial and error.
Hopefully, in reading this, you too can learn from some of our mistakes and have a smoother process in getting started with raising Pekin ducks of your own. I have Pekin dusks 2. I was told that they are not supposed to be indoor pets. I have them in my back yard.
They are very smart and beautiful. The feathers are growing in nicely. Free in the yard. I know they would not sleep in a duck house so I am trying to think of the better answer like creating a nice environment and a shelter they can go under for comfort and shelter instead of inside of a pen.
I am cleaning my yard and getting my garden together to make it more safe, I know there are natural predators, I just pray they stay safe until I find them a good home…. Our ducks were free roamers but they were making to much noise at night. They acted like something was bothering them at night. So we built them a duck house for nightime. Waiting to see how it goes. So far quiet and peaceful.
Very good writing about Pekin Ducks. Originally, the preferred duck was a hearty white meat bird with clean feathers. This led to selective breeding, and by the early s, Aylesbury ducks were a sought-after meat bird being shipped throughout England including London regularly.
Aylesbury ducks were considered more flavorful and less fatty than Pekin ducks. An abundance of inbreeding combined with the World Wars led to the Aylesbury's decline. There is only one major flock left in England today. This gave the German Pekin an upright stance, much like an Indian Runner Duck but with a much stockier appearance.
Pekin ducks arrived in Germany from France and the UK shortly after they were imported by Walter Steward in , and the German version of Pekin was born. The Pekin duck didn't make it back to the United Kingdom until Aylesbury is the preferred duck meat choice in the UK to this day. Germany has not farmed the German Pekin commercially since the Second World War, and it is now listed on the critically endangered species list. Today, these birds are primarily kept as pets and displayed in shows.
Jumbo Pekins are bred by crossing a meaty strain Pekin drake with a medium-sized Pekin hen. These birds are the largest Pekins you can get, and they are often a preferred choice for meat birds because of their size and fertility rates. Because these ducks grow so fast, their legs aren't built to hold their own weight, which reduces their life cycle and productivity.
People do not usually keep them as pets for this reason. Domestic Crested Ducks most likely originated in the East Indies. They were depicted in paintings there over years ago. So, how do these guys get their cute little hairdos?
It's a deformity of the skull caused by a genetic mutation called "hemizygous. Please note that there is a difference between wild and domestic crested ducks. Wild crested ducks don't have that cute little fluff ball on their heads.
These ducks have an American Pekin-like appearance and are created in France by a man named Grimaud Freres. Grimaud ducks are genetically modified to be fertile, high-output egg-layers with an improved feed conversion ratio as meat birds.
Due to the proprietary nature, little is known about this breed other than what's posted on Mr. Freres' website. Weight is measured in pounds. Egg size is measured in grams. It is not meant to substitute for diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, prescription, or formal and individualized advice from a veterinary medical professional.
Animals exhibiting signs and symptoms of distress should be seen by a veterinarian immediately. A quick fix: the "pekin duckhead" pictured in this article is actually an Embden goose. If they are by themselves, they can get very depressed easily for not having another mate to play with. Most ducks are very social animals and don't like being alone, so I recommend getting at least 2 ducks.
Hope this helps! I own 3 pekins as my pet and they are very attached to each other and whenever I take one away from the other when I put them away for bed, they go crazy don't worry they sleep together they just get put away one at a time My ducks are Raini, Nugget and Daisy, but nugget got bit by my dog as a duckling and I was very sad but we went to the vet multiple times and now nugget is a happy and healthy duck. He is a little bit smaller then his playmates because I think he was a late developer could be from the injury but he is growing and he is very happy and healthy now, but while he was a bit smaller, my other ducks looked after him and treated him like a child.
I hope you enjoyed this and I hope you follow my advice about getting ducks! One is bigger, feistier, and has a really loud quack and the other is smaller, calmer and has the same quack. My ducks have a weird looking thing on there backs just above there tail do anyone know what it is please. Health Problems. Freshwater Pets. Freshwater Aquariums.
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