Keeping ducks and chickens together is one of those expectation/reality things. What you think will happen: the ducks and chickens will all eat together and forage together and sleep together and be pretty together and generally be a harmonious, happy flock—right? What actually might happen: the ducks ruin the chickens’ …
Free-ranging, as wonderful as it is for your ducks, always carries some level of risk. Free-range ducks can be extremely vulnerable to predators. Whether your ducks can free-range depends on your location, the predators in the area, and other factors you may not be able to control. However, one of …
If you’ve raised ducklings, you likely ended up with an equal ratio of males and females–or, if you were unlucky, more males than females. Unfortunately, in most small, confined flocks, equal ratios just don’t work out. Drakes can fight viciously with each other and can be hard on females, sometimes …
One of the first questions that comes up when people get new ducks is, “What sex are they?” Identifying the sex of ducks, especially ducklings, can be difficult. In this article, I’ll cover two methods for sexing ducklings (plus seven methods that don’t work, are unreliable, or are only small …
You’re wondering how you can walk in your yard without Mr. Macho tearing a gash in your leg with his razor-sharp talons and leaving nasty dark bruises with his hard, twisting bite. You don’t want to resort to inviting your beloved drake for dinner. Neither do you want to become …
When a Muscovy duckling hatches, you can’t say, “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” All you can do is look at the cute fluffball and say, “It’s a baby!” Three months later, it’s no longer a baby, but it still hasn’t said what it is. Why did they have …
Does a male duck need a female companion? Does a female duck need a male companion? The answer is no: ducks do not need a companion of the opposite sex to be happy.
Some ducks will fly. That’s sometimes fine, but sometimes they will fly away, and you may never see them again. The solution? Clip their wings. Here’s how you do it.
