Ducklings. And imprinting.

[Homemadewhine]

I'm due some ducklings in the next week :) they will be our pets and when they are big enough will live in our (city) garden.

All the literature I read says do not let the ducklings imprint too heavily on humans as it can cause trouble.

What sort of 'trouble'? Looting? Armed robbery? Murder by ducks?

^^no idea, but watching with interest.

What breed are you getting?

We had two Welsh H a couple of weeks ago and they are amazing. They are so sweet.

Some Indian runners :) really excited but don't want troublesome ducks!

I adore the Indian runners. If all goes well with our WH we will be getting a couple of fawn and white Indian runners in the summer?

How many are you getting?

Only a few, just for some eggs getting excited now!

The eggs are large and very tasty. DC love them.

We have 7 indian runners. From what I've heard/experienced I don't think imprinting will be too much of an issue with this breed as they're pretty hard to tame.

Mine are trained to go to bed on command and will take food from my hand but they don't want to be picked up or stroked.

Be warned, they're smelly, sometimes noisy and will wreck your garden - say goodbye to any grass you have now. They also are highly entertaining and great fun.

binary how have you trained yours to go to bed on command?

Ours just swim to the centre of their pond so we can't get them at bedtime!

It's a bit late to warn me about having no grass!! Mine won't do that I'm sure. Neither will they be hard to tame. And they will be trained perfectly.

I've always just herded them towards the shed shouting 'bed'! Now I can shout bed from the back door and they trot in!

Ducks do like a muddy mess, so sadly any grass will disappear quickly. We originally had ours on waste land covered in brambles and they stripped the patch their own was on back to bare soil, so very useful.

You can buy matting to protect grass but it works out quite expensive. What are you going to use for a pond?

I have a small pond and a plastic padding pool. I'm only having 4 ducks! 4 won't hurt my grass will they?!?!

How much grass do you have that the ducks will have access to? Paddling pools are great as easy to clean out. Ducks poo A LOT so the water gets rancid pretty quick.