I was one of many who went to get chickens from the supply store, and brought back two little yellow exciting balls of peeping. Ducks! How exciting? Who doesn’t want a little quacker walking around in their flock? Well….. if we knew then what we know now, I am 98% positive we wouldn’t have added these to our flock. Which sounds harsh, but it’s just a rational reality in our case.. let me explain.

I know this next line is going to make you roll your eyes, because it’s just a lesson we refuse to learn apparently. We didn’t do enough research about ducks in general before we got them. In fact.. we assumed they were pretty much chickens who love water. I knew someone who had chickens and kept their two ducks in with their chickens and everyone got along. That was the extent of my research. We picked out two random ducks, we knew that there was a chance they could be girl or boy.

What we didn’t know was:

  • They are very social and need companions, and are best in a flock
  • They are 20x messier than chickens
  • They can’t be potty trained in any way- so if they have to go potty.. it happens right there right then and its basically a big watery bird poop
  • That I would feel cruel if I didn’t have a clean pool of water readily available to them at all times
  • They have a male to female ratio needed of 1:4 if you want to keep the peace in regards to their sex drive
  • Males can try to mate with your chickens, which could kill the chicken
  • Their mating rituals seem cruel

Now before you go thinking I am a duck hater- I fully encourage you to read to the end of this blog post which should change your mind. I am simply painting a very different picture than the excited woman holding two babies ducks while leaving the supply store had in her head. A picture that would have probably changed my view on getting ducks for my homestead at this time.

Our First Loss, and Gain

What started with two sweet baby ducks changed quickly when one of our two fell sick. The sad reality about having fowl and poultry as pets is that sometimes they pass and you see no signs of it before it’s too late. There are a lot of complicated things that go on within that little body of theirs. So we unfortunately had a heartbreaking goodbye with one of our new babies, Puddles. We still can’t tell you what happened to Puddles.. we worked with several other duck owners online in various Facebook groups who tried to help but no one could confirm the issues we were seeing so late that night. By morning she was gone. We were frantic to get our other baby, Daphne, a new best friend.

I just so happened to have a friend contact me the day before (how creepy is that timing?) to see if I would be willing to take 2 of her baby ducks that were about the same age as mine. She wasn’t sure if they were male or female. I didn’t care- I just needed Daphne to stop looking for her best friend. Within 12 hours of us finding Puddles deceased, we welcomed two new furry ducks into our home, Sunny & Scarlett. They were quickly accepted as a new three way best friend pact and life was {somewhat} fine again.

The Messy Reality

I did have someone tell me how messy ducks were once, and I did believe them. But when you look into the eyes of these sweet little balls of fluff you just wonder how much mess could really make you see them any different? I mean I have 3 children who are incredibly messy, and I still love them <3. The key to knowing how messy ducks can be is that you then can learn ways to make cleanup easier to minimize the mess. While they are babies it’s just a lot of work: changing their water constantly and changing their bedding constantly because they stomp and splash the water all over their bedding that they also pooped all over so pretty much there is just muddy poopy mess all over everything.

The baby pen that we used was set up from a folding dog create, just like we used for our chickens. Find the tutorial here: Quick (DIY) Dog Crate Brooder

When they got old enough to go out to the coop with the chickens- life was easier. Still messier than the chickens but we had put sand inside our run, so the ducks watery poop would drain into the sand and once the sand was dry it would be easy to rake up and once again, life was {somewhat} fine.

Male to Female Ratio

Who would have thought that male ducks, or drakes as they are called, would be such demanding sexual beings. The more I learned about this topic the further and further I got away from seeing those sweet yellow fluffballs that I originally picked up. From early on we were pretty positive that Sunny, the larger of the three, was a boy. Turns out, once they were old enough I confirmed we had two boys and 1 girl. Sunny and Daphne (now, Donald) are boys. Scarlett was then our only girl. Here are the items I had to solved for:

  1. They need a separate pen than your chickens, so we knew right then and there that we were going to have the cost of building a new coop and run.
  2. They need enough ladies to keep them sexually happy. The general guidance is 4 females to 1 male. There are many people who claim they have lower than the ratio recommended and their lives are just as happy. Others say that the males overwork the low number of females that they have and they end up having to separate them throughout the year or the females will start getting hurt.

The number one issue, I could absolutely solve for. I can always build a new coop and run (and by I, I mean my husband). Number two gave me a lot of stress. We thought having two little fluffs were not a big deal but adding more would just add to the current chores we had planned. We discussed all options, if we rehomed one of the boys, we could get less girls added in… there wasn’t one vote towards this option. So I started searching for female ducks. In my head I needed 4 more girls to feel comfortable with how close to the suggested ratio I could get, and then if we were seeing issues we could add more females to the flock.

Finding ladies was much harder than I thought. First off- most people who are rehoming their ducks are only rehoming that males for the same problem that I was experiencing. And all of the hatcheries near me only offered straight run ducks meaning they could be males or females, not doing that again. The hatcheries that I could order online required a 10 duck minimum when ordering. Sigh… So I continued to post on Facebook groups until I came across a woman who was 2 hours from my house that had females for sale, and they were full grown already!

Long story short- I went to pick up 4, and grabbed 5 instead :), and life was {somewhat} fine again.

Welcoming the final 5

Although deciding to get these girls was was a stressful process, our whole family was excited for new additions. They always are. And I could finally stop stressing about the day my Drakes decided to be men and start over-loving on my lady!

The best part of getting new additions is naming them! With 5 added into the mix, each of us got to pick one name. Here is where we landed:

Old flock: Sunny, Donald, and Scarlett

New ladies-
Ava’s: Daisy
Chloe’s: Neko
Leo’s: Fanny Mae (he seriously didn’t hesitate on this name either, it was adorable)
Derrick’s: Daphne (he refused to not re-use this name)
Traci’s (me): Betty White

Now, we see a HUGE difference in work now that we have 8 instead of 3. There is a lot more poop to clean, which brought more flies. A lot more quacking, and more bedding. Regardless, we are happy to have them 🙂

What I Love About My Flock:

To end on a positive note, even though I know we wouldn’t have chose this journey if we had known all the complications (and additional money needed) we would run into, I absolutely love these ladies! Here are a couple of reasons why:

  • Ducks are just funny – they do funny things, and have such big personalities.
  • They waddle, and when they run it’s so adorable!
  • The way they eat out of your hand will make you laugh. Every time.
  • They grow SO FAST! It was amazing to see them each day and think they have doubled in size.
  • EGGS! Because these new ladies were a year old we immediately started getting eggs! Yum.
  • They are sooooo soft! If you are lucky enough to have a duck that allows you to hold them, you wont regret those snuggles.
  • They don’t need much motivation to get to bed at night. A tiny bit of herding and they all run right in there.
  • They typically follow each other. So if you can convince one of them to do something- the rest follow right along.
  • When they are grabbing things from the bottom of the pond their little fluff butts just float in the air.

The list seriously goes on and on.. If you have ducks, drop a line with your favorite thing about them!