Raising Ducks
Basics
Duckling diary
Management
Housing
Eggs
Links/Resources
Movies
and please note:
Duck management: daily routine
Our adult ducks live in our backyard, in a pen
under our second-story deck at night and in a movable
grazing pen during the day. The grazing pen has a baby pool, which
they use in lieu of a pond for bathing. When we're home during the day,
we also give them some "free range" time to roam the backyard.
The grazing pen gives them enough room to move around comfortably while
keeping them from tearing up the yard or the garden. (See my notes on
backyard pasture.)
We manage their routine so that the bulk
of the work is in the evening; all we have to do in the morning is move
them, give them fresh food, and collect the eggs. This is much easier
when you have to work off the homestead during the day. In total, managing
the ducks takes less than ten minutes in the morning and ten to fifteen
minutes in the evening, unless it's time to clean out their pen.
Morning
The ducks are finished laying by about 7 a.m., when we let them out of
their night pen on weekdays before we go to work. We let them out into
the yard while we collect their eggs, which they lay in the same places
every day (but not, predictably, in their nestboxes).
We put out fresh food (see my notes on
feeding) and then herd them into the grazing
pen.
Herding ducks
Herding ducks take a little practice, but their instinct is to flock
closely together, so it is not too difficult. Because they can see almost
360 degrees, you can simply walk behind them and guide them with small
motions. To get them to turn right, for example, I just swing my left
arm out to the side. Sharp or sudden movements can spook the ducks and
be counterproductive.
The only time we have problems herding them
is in the morning when we have moved their pen to a new location. Occasionally,
one duck — usually Sybil — will miss the gate to the pen and
run around the side, and then the only thing to be done is to let them
all back out, round them up, and herd them in again.
Basset hounds, sadly, are of little help
in this endeavor.
The eggs
Inside, we weigh the eggs on a kitchen scale and note the number and
weight of the eggs, along with the weather and any notes, on a form we
keep tacked to the refrigerator. (A sample form
is available here in PDF format.)
Each egg carton is labeled with a consecutive
number. This doesn't tell us exactly how old each dozen is, but it does
tell us which are the oldest. We don't have enough space in our refrigerator
to store more than about two weeks' worth of eggs, so we're not worried
about spoilage.
Evening
In the evening, we let them out of their grazing pen to roam the backyard.
How long they get to "free range" depends on how much light
is left when we get home from work and how much time we feel like spending
outside with them: anywhere from ten minutes to two hours. The yard is
fenced, but to keep them safe, we only let them out when either a human
or a dog (one of ours, that is!) is outside with them.
We use two waterers, one for each pen, and
we clean and fill both waterers in the evening. We also dump out, clean,
and refill the baby pool, which they insist on using as a toilet as well
as a bathtub. In the summer, we carry this water in buckets to our flower
gardens, but in the winter we just dump it. (The pool takes about 10 gallons
of water a day.)
Then we herd them back into their night
pen, give them fresh food, and turn on their nightlight. If we're giving
them kitchen or garden scraps, we usually do it at this time.
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