Raising Ducks
Basics
Duckling diary
Management
Housing
Eggs
Links/Resources
Movies
and please note:
Links: Raising ducks
THE FIRST RESOURCE I WOULD RECOMMEND is Dave Holderread's book Raising the Home Duck Flock (Storey Books, 1978). It has recently been republished by Storey under a new title but I believe the new edition is essentially the same. This is an excellent, comprehensive guide to raising, keeping, and making use of ducks on a small scale.
There are also a number of good websites on raising ducks, many of them offering personal experiences that we have found very helpful in starting our own duck flock. I have listed some of them here. Unfortunately, the best site I found, the Beginner's Guide to Raising Indian Runner Ducks, is no longer available. In selecting the links below, I've focused on sites with good information for people interested in home-scale operations; I've avoided both high-intensity commercial advice and sites on pet ducks.
General information
Duck Care — Cornell University
The Cornell University Duck Research Laboratory provides a good website on Duck Care, which includes answers to questions on health, nutrition, housing, and hatching as well as information on the agricultural roles and food value of ducks.
The Poultry Connection
The Poultry Connection is a sort of megasite on raising poultry. Most of what's here is photos, ads, and links, but there are also forums where people can exchange information, including a Waterfowl Forum, which is a lively forum and sees daily activity.
The Poultry Connection also hosts other smaller sites on poultry. One hosted site, the Quackers Home Page has some good information about ducks, including links to hatcheries and suppliers, but be warned: the author has music playing automatically on every page, so turn your speakers down if you are browsing at work (or if you don't feel you'd enjoy a MIDI version of "Rubber Ducky"). Her pages of links refer to some good websites on raising poultry, including an entire section of sites on candling eggs.
The Feather Site
The Feather Site is "an on-line zoological garden of domestic poultry, including photos, video and information" about various species and breeds of domestic poultry and wild fowl. The site is organized by species; go directly to the duck section if you wish. For each species there are separate pages for each breed, including 26 breeds of ducks, with a brief history of the breed, photos, and breed-specific links.
Guidelines in Rearing Laying Ducks
The Department of Veterinary Services in Perak, Malaysia, has a good page of guidelines for rearing layers. The information is sparse but comprehensive and easily accessible.
Personal accounts
Jane's Cottage
Jane's Cottage (from England) offers information on ducks as well as peafowl and chickens. Particularly good are her pages on pond building and predator-proof fencing, which include good photos of the construction. The author was also kind enough to respond to Kathy's email with some good advice on predator-proofing.
Path to Freedom: Raising Ducks in the City
Path to Freedom is the website of a family of urban homesteaders in Pasadena, California. They have an amazing range of agricultural projects in a very small space, including both chickens and ducks.
Terrie Lacy
Terrie Lacy of Lacy's Latherworks in Oregon recently began raising Campbells and Runners. She has photos of her ducklings and their future house here, and I expect she will be updating her website frequently!
Faye's Dandy Duck Page
Faye's Dandy Duck Page is the creation of a sixteen year-old from Sydney, Australia, who has spent her teenage years trying to get her parents to let her have ducks in their backyard—and building this website. She has some good basic information here, mostly mined from other websites, but her enthusiasm for ducks makes the site worth a visit.
Housing
Kintaline Poultry and Waterfowl Centre
This farm in Scotland sells houses for both ducks and chickens within the United Kingdom. Their houses are designed for variously sized flocks, but all for small-scale agriculture. If you live in the U.K., you might simply want to pay them for a house. If not, or if you're inclined toward D.I.Y., their photos make good models for construction. The Westford is the model I used as a basis for our duck house.
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