DUCK CHEAT SHEET

I have had Muscovies for four years and also keep Rouen, Welsh Harlequin, Runner, Crested, and Khaki Campbell ducks. This is a little of what I have learned about keeping ducks healthy and happy.

COOPS
Ducks are wet, messy creatures. As such, you want them outdoors as much as possible. How do you accomplish that in the winter? Well, here is what I do…
I have a smaller, insulated building as my duck coop. They can all cuddle in there on cold nights if they want. Be sure to bed it well with straw and replace the straw as needed.
Attached to this small building is a BIG tarp garage I picked up during one of Canadian Tire’s 60% off sales. It’s about 10×20. I cut a hole in the solid end and butted it up to the coop’s pop hole. Be sure to stake it down using the provided anchors or it may fly across the yard while you’re not home and cause your husband to send you angry texts. Don’t ask how I know.
Inside the tarp building, you guessed it, more straw! What I found worked well was to bed it well at the beginning of winter, then I left the core of a round bale in there for when I needed to re-bed. The ducks had a great time roosting on the bale and re-bed the place on their own all winter with their activities. On sunny winter days, it gets toasty warm inside the garage. A thick bed of straw is important to protect their feet from the cold. With lots of straw, they do extremely well, even without heat. Mine generally hang out in their tarp garage 24/7 for the winter months.
You can stack square bales around the outsides of the tarp garage to help cut down on drafts and snow blowing in.
Keep your water source OUTSIDE your coop and tarp garage. Otherwise, the ducks will ensure that your building never fully dries out.
Chickens are sensitive to humidity, so I don’t recommend keeping ducks and chickens together. I tried it one winter. I won’t do that again.
If you are building your duck pen from scratch, make a gate or removable fence panel wide enough that you can get a bobcat in there to help clean out the tarp garage. Or whatever equipment you’re going to use.
Muscovy hens and some other breeds will fly out of their pen, so if you want to keep them in, flight netting is a must. You can get it online from Berry Hill, or Airdrie Canvas is another source.
Ducks are a little bigger than chickens, so if you are planning space, allow 5 sq ft for light breeds and 6 sq ft for heavy breeds like Rouen and Muscovies.
Muscovies may roost if allowed the opportunity, a 2×4 on the flat works well, 2×6 might be even better.
Be sure to close off the bottoms of all your buildings on skids, or you will have a Muscovy hen under there hatching ducklings.

BREEDING, LAYING, INCUBATING
In my experience, ducks just lay where ever they want and ignore nest boxes. They will sometimes make a nest and multiple hens will lay in it. They will move the nests regularly. They also love to cover up their eggs with straw, so don’t forget to dig. It is like an Easter egg hunt every day, good luck!
My ducks begin to lay when the days get longer and warmer. I have 12 hens and get 7-9 eggs per day (if I can find them). They usually quit laying in the fall and don’t produce all winter.
Drakes are rapey. There’s no nice way to describe it. They’re not gentlemanly about breeding. Come spring, it’s on like donkey kong. I would recommend keeping as few drakes as possible. One drake can easily cover 10 hens. Multiple drakes will gang up on the hens and it can result in injuries or death for the hen, so it is really important to minimise your drake population. Also, fun fact, drakes have corkscrew shaped penises. Once breeding season is over, their penises shrink to as small as 10% of their breeding season size, and it will regrow again the following breeding season. The females also have a corkscrew shaped vagina. So that’s a thing you know now. You’re welcome.
Ducks take longer to incubate than chickens. Most duck breeds take 28 days, but Muscovies take 35 days. Muscovy crosses hatch around 32 days.
I have no incubating advice for you, as I have Muscovy hens who do an amazing job hatching for me. A little too amazing. Sometimes they disappear for 35 days and come back with 15 ducklings. It’s a problem. An adorable, fluffy problem.

DUCKLINGS
Ducklings are hardier and grow more quickly than chicks. You still want to add vitamins to their water for the first week and periodically thereafter, same as chicks.
Ducklings do best on waterfowl starter if you can find it. If you can’t, they do just fine on non-medicated chick starter.
Some people advise adding nutritional yeast to the feed if you are using chick starter for extra niacin, I have never had an issue with using only chick starter.
Keep ducklings on starter for only 2-3 weeks, then move them to Grower. This is especially important with Muscovies, who will develop angel wing if they have too much protein for too long.
You can correct angel wing by taping the ducks wings to their body, however in my experience the angel wings will be an issue again when the birds moult. So just try to avoid it.
Ducklings love to make a mess with their water, so be prepared to change their water often and clean their brooder frequently because it will STINK. I use regular shavings in my duck brooders.
Ducklings come off heat sooner than chicks, I raise mine under brooder plates so they can come and go from their heat source whenever they like. You will notice that they don’t spend much time under heat, but they do still need it for the first 3 weeks, or longer if it is early in the year.
You can provide grit and finely chopped grass or greens like romaine lettuce as treats. Ducklings are not prone to coccidiosis like chicks, and they do love their greens!

FOOD AND WATER
In the warm months, I provide a kiddie pool as well as several buckets and some shallow feed pans full of water. The ducks come running when they hear the hose. They love fresh water… Because they love to change it from nice clean water into disgusting mud. No kidding around, they are disgusting. They will pick up beaks full of dirt and put it in the water. They’ll put their food in the water. Change it daily and you will still have an inch of muck at the bottom of the pail.
In the winter, I use a rubber pail with a de-icer in it for the ducks, same as I do for my chickens. It becomes more challenging to rinse and replace the water daily without turning your yard into a skating rink, but do your best. Ducks do require a source of open water because they need to dunk their nostrils and eyes to keep them flushed and clean. I don’t provide swimming water in the winter, but on nice days I will give them a rubber feed pan of water to play in outside.
Adult ducks can be fed the same ration as adult chickens. I mix my own rations using our own wheat + 35% poultry supplement. I provide this free-choice to the ducks year-round. You can also offer grit and oyster shell, same as chickens.

DUCKS ARE THE BEST. CHANGE MY MIND.
So, now that we have established that ducks are messy, disgusting rapists who hide their eggs like feathery ninjas, why do I keep them?! Because they are awesome. They have such great personalities and they are joyful little companions. We free range our ducks in our large, treed yard, so we never know where they will pop up next, and it’s fun to see them emerge from the bushes or wander down the hedge. They also do an AMAZING job of bug control. They basically eat bugs and pick at grass and weeds all day.

BEST BREEDS
For a long time, I thought Muscovies were gross looking. I mean, their faces look like a herpes outbreak. But their personalities more than make up for their herpes faces, and they are absolutely the cutest ducklings. Hands down, I recommend Muscovies as the ducks with the best personalities for first time duck owners. They are also quiet – they don’t quack. The males have a guttural sigh, and the females have cute little peeping noises. They waddle around wagging their tails when they’re happy. They like to hang out and see what you’re doing. If hand-raised, they are extremely friendly.
We also love our Rouens, with the Welsh Harlequins in third place. The runners are jerks but it’s hilarious when they run.

HEALTHCARE AND FIRST AID
Ducks are much less prone to diseases than chickens. They don’t require vaccines.
Ducks should be dewormed twice a year. Talk to your vet about deworming options. No, ACV, garlic, pumpkin seeds or diatomaceous earth do not work as dewormers for ducks.
Ducks should be checked regularly for external parasites, but as long as they can clean themselves properly with water, they do well. I have never found an external parasite on my ducks. Check anyway.
Ducks will occasionally rip out a nail, so keep blood stop powder around.
Having a method of dispatching ducks is an unfortunate reality of poultry keeping. Ducks are stronger that chickens, it is very difficult to break their necks, so be prepared and keep a sharp hatchet around.
That’s all I’ve ever required for duck first aid items over the last four years.