My feed
Premium

Please
or
to access all these features

Meet others keeping chickens on our Mumsnet Chicken forum.

Chicken keepers

Ducks anyone?

6 replies

cazinski · 10/06/2011 18:49

I've been toying with the idea of keeping chickens for ages now, and as we are moving somewhere a lot more rural and with land-I'm finally going to get around to doing it!
Anyway, I have been doing a bit of research/nosying around at what I'll need to do, get prepared etc and I came across a uk website that had ducklings for sale and had lots of interesting info on keeping ducks.
Now I've started wondering if ducks would be a more fun venture, we love duck eggs and find ducks in general lovely birds.

Does anyone else keep ducks? If so, would love a bit of general advice...or should I just stick to the chickens?? Confused

OP posts:
Report
mummymeister · 10/06/2011 21:19

We have 3 ducks only. they are what can be called intermittant egg layers and mine tend to just leave them around. what about guinea fowl ( bit noisy) turkeys or something exotic - quails. if you are doing it for a bit of fun then you can affort to experiment.!

Report
Punkatheart · 11/06/2011 15:36

I do love ducks and had them as a child. Noisy, nosy and a lot of fun. You have to keep 'em safe from foxes - just like chickens and they HAVE to have water. Perfect set up for ducks is of course a duck pond with an island in the middle. I think they are more work - they are certainly messier.

I do think they are fantastic though. If I had more land I would definitely keep them..

Report
lostinwales · 19/06/2011 21:59

Ducks are fantastic, we have/had three, two Aylesbury girls and a mix and match drake called Duke. They are big for ducks and have the most amazing personalities, I could sit in the kitchen all day and watch them pootle about, plus no slugs or snails anymore. There is a big but though, they are nosy and destructive and having been completely free range in our back garden have learnt to scale a 10 foot vertical bank and go on the rampage around the village, digging holes in peoples lawns. They always come back for a drink of water and swim but people don't like holes in their lawn Blush. They have been rehoused on the village pond in the charge of the local miller as to keep them here we had to fence them in quite a lot and it made me too sad to see them caged. Probably not such a problem with smaller breed though. I've only been to visit them about 5 times today Sad.

Report
silentcatastrophe · 10/07/2011 19:00

we have indian runners. gorgeous! One v ill at moment. He'll either be ok or die in the night. they need water to wash their faces and clean up, but not a pond.

Report
DaisySteiner · 15/07/2011 13:39

We've had a few ducks over the years, the last ones being two Indian Runners which we had for 5 years before they were killed by a fox last week Sad Sad IRs and Khaki Campbells are fantastic layers in my experience - younger ducks will lay pretty much continuously from February to October, rarely missing a day. Even our slightly elderly lady was laying a good 5 or 6 a week.

We now have two apricot IRs and 7 eggs in the incubator from our breeding pair who were killed last week. I can't wait, got everything crossed that they hatch!

Report
AmberLeaf · 06/08/2011 14:59

Are they very noisy?

I have been thinking of getting some ex battery hens and came across some ducks on a site.

Dont want to annoy my neighbours!

Report
Please create an account

To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.