Wilder Home Lifestyle

This was our first time being duck owners. Here are some important things that I learned. Ducklings have different protein needs throughout development, and it is very important to meet those needs for proper development and healthy ducks. Ducks don’t like people. Maybe some people they do, but there is also a high risk of salmonella which can easily and quickly become life-threatening to young children and older people. So, if you want to cuddle with them, you have to make sure you are very diligent about cleaning yourself up. If you are worried about the health of your children, this might make bonding with ducklings difficult. However, I have seen many people who are fine with their infants/toddlers playing with them. I just didn’t feel that the benefit outweighed the risk.

We got our initial ducklings from Tractor Supply, they were very healthy and easier to work with. However, once they reached maturity, we learned that we had one hen and three drakes. This became a hassle for many reasons. First off, we already loved all of them. But we knew for the safety of our hen, we needed to re-home two of the drakes. I reached out to every farm near us for help. But almost every farmer said that they just re-home them on Facebook Marketplace or through duck groups. This was actually very difficult because it is a common issue so everyone else on the duck group pages were also trying to get rid of drakes. Finding hens was even harder, I called every duck farm in the five states that surround us. I spent a whole week messaging everyone and calling everyone. I was finally feeling so overwhelmed that I begged a duckling seller to tell me if they knew of anyone who sells mature hens. He gave me the name of the farmer that they buy their ducklings from to sell. I called the farmer and he agreed to sell me some of his mature ducks. Which lead to a 5-6 hour car trip, honestly not sure how long it took because it was a complete blur and we had to drive to Pennsylvania. So there was a lot of car sickness and outfit changes.

Sadly, we had to re-home my favorite ducks because my child loved a specific drake. So, we decided to keep that one. I was very grateful to the woman who came to get them. She was so kind and sent a video of the ducks happy on her farm because she knew our son was sad about them leaving. It was hard to find someone, but it was the most ideal end result.

Once we brought the new hens home, after the longest smelliest drive of my whole life, we moved them into a separate run from the other ducks and let them live next to each other for a week. Then we put them together and they immediately started hiding in the same corner together. The ducks from the farmer are definitely not as healthy as the ducks we raised and they are also a lot more skittish. They are getting more used to us, but they still run away whenever we open their run. We are hoping that eventually they will like us enough to be able to roam in the garden freely without running away. One new hen ran away and hid under the neighbors tree for about 25 minutes while spiders crawled all over my head as I too was under the tree trying to get her. I got them as pets not really for homesteading needs so whether or not they lay well was not really a concern for me. But the hens we bought lay eggs for us, and they were about 19 weeks when we got them. Overall, if I were to do this over, I would’ve ordered sexed ducklings from Metzer Farms instead of getting ducks from Tractor Supply. But I do love my very messy ducks.