Early last year, I decided that the time had come to pull the plug on my chicken enterprise. To be clear about this, I’m not going to abandon the Hipster Hens. Nevertheless, I am aware of four inescapable facts. First, I’ll be celebrating my 70th birthday in a few weeks. Second, I allow my birds to live out their natural lives—that’s how it works in my coop. Third, some chickens can live for ten years or more. And fourth, I’ve done the math. Last spring, as the baby chick season rolled around, I made the firm decision I was not going to have any more chicks—ever.

So, I got ducklings.

Yeah. I know. The only logical way to look at my decision is to not look for logic. Maybe the logic was that I was in my second lackluster pandemic year and it was time to shake things up.

Anyway, last summer was anything but lackluster. I filled my days building a duck coop, a duck run, and all the other necessary duck infrastructure. And as a newbie duck keeper I had to learn about these strange new creatures that had come to live in my coop.

Since I’ve been a chicken guy for a while, I went into the duck operation thinking that if I could maintain a flock of chickens, segueing into ducks would not be rocket science. Ducks and chickens are both barnyard poultry, after all. Both have beaks and wings and feathers and lay eggs. So, there you go, right?

Um, nope. Segueing into ducks was not rocket science—it was poultry science. Fortunately, I read a bunch of books before the ducklings arrived. As I worked my way through the books I gradually arrived at this profound truth: Ducks are not chickens. Nearly a year of duck-keeping has reinforced that fact. It has also given me a ton of personal experiences about their differences. Here are a few.

Ducks Need Water

Well, of course ducks need water, you say. Chickens need water, too. All animals need water! That’s true, I reply. But ducks are basically fish with feathers! Chickens are neat drinkers, like connoisseurs at a wine tasting. Ducks are funneling frat boys at a kegger. Chickens sip water. Ducks insert their whole head into the water. It’s how they keep their eyes and nostrils clean. If ducks were limited to a water fount or a nipple drinker, not only would they be very unhappy, they would soon be unhealthy.

Ducks also need water to aid them in swallowing dry food when they eat. Duckie mealtime is a free-for-all of ducks bouncing between the food and water pans. At day’s end the water is opaque with submerged and floating food chunks and the food is completely soggy. Dumping murky water and wet feed is not a thing with chickens, but with ducks it’s a daily chore.

I also discovered that if I give a duck a water container large enough to submerge her head, she’ll do her best to submerge her entire body. And she’ll accompany this action with wing beating and loud and happy quacking.

But, in fact, ducks do need to get their whole body wet. They’ve got a preen gland near their tail that activates when they dunk themselves in water. They rub oil from the gland onto their heads and then use their heads to spread the oil over their feathers. Chickens dust bathe, but ducks bathe in water. I get that. I prefer bathing in water myself! So, ducks splash a little water. Okay, a LOT of water! It keeps them clean and healthy, makes them really happy, and that’s how it is!

And the area around the water container becomes a swamp.

Ducks love their muddy swamps! Early on, my ducks dug a few impressively large holes in the mud with their beaks. I’m pretty sure they were trying to excavate their own duck pond. My solution: When I built the ducks’ permanent quarters. I laid four inches of pea gravel in the run. Then, I carpeted the top of the pea gravel with hardware cloth to keep out tunneling predators. Finally, I laid a thick plastic mesh made for horse stalls atop the hardware cloth. The ducks’ water pan and their kiddie pool sit right on top of the plastic mesh. The ducks can splash water to their hearts’ content while the water runs through the floor into the pea gravel base. No muss, no mud!

But while this bit of infrastructure solved the problem of a duck swamp, it is totally unnecessary in the chicken run. Ducks, I may have mentioned, are not chickens.

Ducks in the pool, pool on the mesh, mesh on the hardware cloth, hardware cloth on the pea gravel, pea gravel on the ground, and the ground down in the valleyo.

Ducks Are Messy

Sure, you say. Chickens are messy, too. That’s true, I reply, but, well, see above. While chickens are known for constant and indiscriminate pooping, ducks are too. And because ducks consume so much water, the volume and sheer gooiness of their excrement is beyond anything chickens can muster up.

Because of all that wet manure, I lay a thick coating of absorbent bedding on the coop floor. I continue to layer new bedding as it becomes necessary. And I completely remove the soiled bedding and replace it with fresh bedding regularly. What is “regularly?” At least once a week. I clean more frequently in the summer because of the odor and because all that wet, manure-laden bedding is a breeding ground for flies.

I’ve learned that the swamp around the water container can happen as readily inside the coop as outdoors, and the best strategy is not having an indoor water container. And since ducks need to consume water with their food, the food pan also stays outside.

At daybreak, the chickens can hop off their roost and get down to the business of pecking up some breakfast, since their food and water are right in the coop. But the ducks are forced to mutter under their breath and impatiently tap their webbed feet until I manage to get into the coop and get the pop door open. I’ve kept the ducks from revolting and myself in bed until a reasonable hour with a light-activated automatic pop door. As soon as the timer flicks the coop lights on, the door opens and the ducks can waddle outside for their al fresco breakfast.

The ducks love their automatic pop door!

Ducks Need Duck Food

Stores selling chicken feed are everywhere, thanks to the thriving backyard chicken movement. There are fewer backyard ducks, so logically, stores that sell duck feed are few and far between. If you’re new to ducks and expect your friendly local chicken feed place to carry duck feed, you may be in for an unpleasant surprise. Some of them will. And some of them may have a few dusty bags of one kind of duck feed in the back. A few might have less-than-perfect “all flock feed.” Many will have nothing.

If you’re unable to find duck feed in your area, ducks can manage with chicken feed with a few tweaks. Bear in mind that the chicken feed must be age-appropriate. Adult ducks should receive adult chicken feed and ducklings should get chick feed.

There is a popular myth that medicated chick feed is harmful to baby ducks. It is only a myth. Medicated chick feed contains amprolium, a chemical that controls the parasite that causes coccidiosis by depriving it of thiamine. Amprolium is not an antibiotic, does not harm chicks, nor does it harm ducklings.

The most important thing to know about chicken feed for ducks is that it is deficient in niacin (vitamin B3). Ducks need almost twice as much niacin as chickens do. And without adequate niacin, ducklings won’t develop properly and adult ducks will become ill.

While free-ranging adult ducks can forage a lot of niacin-rich food, if the bulk of their diet is chicken feed, they need supplemental niacin. Babies confined to a brooder only get to eat the food you give them. And since their growing bodies have even higher niacin requirements than adults, it is doubly important that they get a niacin supplement.

Nutritional yeast is a popular, readily available and easy-to-use food product that is high in niacin. You can sprinkle it right on their feed. How much do you need? Well, chickens need 26-27 mg of niacin for every kg of feed, and commercial chicken feed is formulated for those needs. Ducks need 55 mg per kg. So it’s just a matter of checking the labels on your chicken feed and your nutritional yeast and doing a little math. Don’t sweat the math too much. Excess niacin can be toxic in concentrated doses - five or more times the recommended dose. But niacin is a water-soluble vitamin, so if you go slightly overboard with the niacin supplement, your ducks will keep the amount their bodies need and excrete the excess.

While niacin powder in pure form is available, and cheaper than nutritional yeast, getting the right amount in the feed is problematic. Because niacin powder is so concentrated (approximately 7500 mg of niacin per tablespoon vs. around 5 mg of niacin per tablespoon of nutritional yeast), you either have to carefully measure out an exceedingly small quantity or dilute it into such a large amount of feed that uniform mixing it is difficult. If you decide to try pure niacin the most accurate way to distribute it evenly is to mix it into the water.

Ducks Live on the Ground

Chickens spend their nights on a roost. Muscovy ducks also roost, but they are the only roosting ducks. All other breeds of domestic ducks spend their nights, and their whole lives, at ground level.

Ducks need a layer of bedding on their coop floor. In a chicken coop “litter” is there to absorb moisture from the droppings, to keep the coop dry, to control odor and to make the coop easier to clean. The material in a duck coop serves all the same functions as in a chicken coop, but the ducks also sleep in it, thus the correct term for it is “bedding.” Because ducks sleep on the floor, and because their droppings are larger and wetter than chickens’, you must clean their bedding more frequently than you clean the litter in your chicken coop. I clean the coop wall-to-wall every week and clean up badly soiled bedding as needed.

Since ducks live on the ground, they obviously lay their eggs on the ground. The nest boxes I built for the ducks are about 1.5 feet on each side, with a 1.5-inch lip, but otherwise right at floor level. While I use pine shavings in the rest of the duck coop, I lay straw in and in front of the nest boxes. I put a few golf balls in the nest boxes to help promote the “roundish objects belong here” idea to the ducks. While I occasionally find eggs in random spots in the coop, most of the ducks get it right most of the time.

Ducks Are Cold-Tolerant

Here in Minnesota, we’re in the midst of a cold cycle. The overnight temperatures have dropped to twenty below several times in the past few weeks at my house. They've been ten to fifteen degrees colder than that further north. The local chicken forums that I belong to have been peppered with sad tales of chickens losing combs or feet to frostbite, or freezing to death.

I'm a firm believer in providing a little heat in the chicken coop. I use ceramic heat panels in my insulated, well-ventilated, chicken coops. I try to keep the temperature between 35-45 degrees, but it often gets colder than that. The coop thermometer drops into the 20’s on the coldest days.

The good news about ducks is that they can tolerate cold weather better than chickens. On cold days, the chickens stick their heads out of the pop door, scowl, and go back in for the rest of the day. On those same days, the ducks are walking in the snow and splashing in water filled with ice chunks. Ducks survive cold weather thanks to a warm layer of down feathers, a preen gland that keeps their feathers dry, and a remarkable “countercurrent heat exchange” in the blood supply to their legs and feet that keeps the heat loss from those unfeathered body parts to a minimum.

Still, ducks can and do get cold, and if they are left unsheltered in extreme cold, they can suffer frostbite and even freeze to death. So, I’ve done a few things to keep them comfortable and happy in the winter cold.

Ducks don’t appreciate winter gales. I put tarps on two sides of their run to form a windbreak. I also covered the top of the run with tarps to keep out the snow.

I put a nice layer of straw in the run—it keeps their little bare duckie feet off the icy ground. Ducks will walk right through snow—and even enjoy it. But I’ve noticed that when they walk in snow they sometimes hop from foot to foot or lift one foot up into their feathers and stand on one foot. A layer of insulating straw on the ground makes it a whole lot easier for the ducks to keep their feet warm.

Ducks need a constant supply of food to keep their bodies’ furnaces stoked against the cold. Since they always need water when they eat, I keep an electrically heated dog water bowl in the run and top it off with fresh water three times a day.

It would be difficult to keep a duck pond unfrozen in the winter, but ducks don't need a pond. But they do need to dunk their bills and heads. And they appreciate a quick bath and preen. For that, I keep a large rubber feed pan filled with water. The pan is not heated and eventually becomes solidly frozen. Every morning I knock out the ice and fill it with water. Two ducks can hop in at a time—while the others impatiently wait their turn around the edge.

While there’s no water in the coop, there’s a lot of moisture from all that duck poop and even from the ducks’ breath. It’s important to have adequate ventilation to allow the moisture to escape. I cut the vents up high to avoid drafts. The coop walls are insulated as are the floor and ceiling. The nest boxes and the floor in front of them are deeply bedded in snuggly straw.

Are the ducks surviving the winter? Are they happy? One sign that they’re doing fine: I got my very first duck egg in the cold, dark days right before Christmas. Since then, the weather has only gotten colder, yet I continue to get 1-3 duck eggs every day.

Ducks are fine with cold weather. A little straw over the snow and ice helps protect their feet.

Ducks Are Not Chickens

Ducks and chickens are both poultry. Both have beaks and wings and feathers and lay eggs. But after nine months of keeping ducks, I’ve learned the lessons I’ve told here and many more. Ducks are not chickens. They are ducks. And I’m so glad l have them!

A version of this article appeared in Farmer-ish.

SOME DUCK-RAISING RESOURCES:

Barnyard in Your Backyard
A Beginner’s Guide to Raising Chickens, Ducks, Geese, Rabbits, Goats, Sheep, and Cattle
Edited by Gail Damerow
Storey Publishing
2002

This book’s title may create false expectations. Can you really have a functional barnyard in your backyard? If your local ordinances allow them, chickens and rabbits are practical backyard choices. But could there be cows in the backyard of a suburban subdivision? I can’t see how that could ever happen.

But maybe you've just moved onto a few acres. Maybe you're considering getting some animals. And maybe you would like a primer on a variety of animals to help you decide which would be best for your circumstances and preferences. If that's you, then this is your perfect book.

Each animal named in the subtitle gets its own chapter. And each chapter covers the animal’s housing, space and feed requirements, potential health issues, and other care needs. The text is readable and jargon-free and is accompanied by illustrations, charts, a robust glossary, a list of recommended reading, and a state-by state list of resources. Fitting all that information on seven different farm animals into just over 400 pages is an impressive feat. A book covering all those animals obviously can’t be as in-depth as a book dedicated to just one animal. But Barnyard in Your Backyard is a great jumping-off book for you if you’re just getting started and trying to decide what sort of animals should be in your backyard.

Storey’s Guide to Raising Ducks
Dave Holderread
Storey Publishing
2011 (2nd edition)

As a new duck owner, I’ve paged through a lot of books about ducks this year. This book was one of my favorites.

Dave Holderread, now in his late sixties, has raised ducks since he won two ducklings in a school contest in third grade. As you can imagine, he knows about ducks. For anybody in the duck-keeping community, Holderread, is the go-to guy for anything related to raising domestic waterfowl. And most consider Storey’s Guide to Raising Ducks the duck-raiser’s bible.

What this book gets right: Information! This book walks the duck-raising newbie through rearing ducklings, duck housing, swimming water, drinking water, feed and nutrition, and diseases. And a bazillion other topics. The information in the book’s 356 pages is all-encompassing.

Where this book falls down: Organization. As a duck raising newbie, my duck experience began with ducklings. So, that’s what I was most anxious to learn about when I picked up this book. Information on ducklings doesn’t show up in this book until the 13th chapter. The 14th chapter contains practical information about housing and feeding adult ducks. But before I could get to the 13th and 14th chapters, I had to page through twelve chapters. Those first twelve chapters: Many chapters on duck breeds. And a chapter containing interesting but esoteric information on duck colors. All that is good and useful information, but perhaps is better suited for later chapters - or an appendix.

Holderread has recently retired from duck raising/breeding. I wish him well. I also hope that he continues to write in his retirement. Keeping ducks on acreages and hobby farms continues to increase in popularity - so the world needs Holderread’s vast store of knowledge on all things duck. Maybe he would consider working on a new edition of this book, given that the current edition is now ten years old. And some colored pictures and a bit of reorganization would improve any new edition of this already outstanding book.

But even if a new edition never happens, you should include Storey’s Guide to Raising Ducks in your library. And if you’re like me, you’ll keep Storey’s Guide to Raising Ducks close at hand and thumb through it regularly.

Choosing and Keeping Ducks and Geese
Liz Wright
TFH Publications
2008

This book quickly became a favorite as I perused duck books in preparation for my journey into duck keeping.

Liz Wright is the editor of Smallholder Magazine. (“Smallholding” is the British term for what we Americans call hobby farms or acreages.) Besides this book, she has authored books on sustainable living, smallholding, horses, chickens and similar topics.

This information-rich 208-page book gets right down to business. After a few introductory pleasantries, it jumps right into what a beginning duck owner needs to do. First, acquiring equipment, and then getting the ducks or geese. Section topics that follow include housing, safety from predators, water, daily care, feed, and eggs. Later chapters include information on diseases and showing poultry. Finally, the last half of the book is a breed directory, illustrated with large colored photographs.

I keep Choosing and Keeping Ducks and Geese right next to Storey’s Guide to Raising Ducks on my desk. Since I’m a beginner, it’s good to have the expertise of both of these books close at hand for quick reference.

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