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In the wake of the general passion for chickens and quails, other birds bred by man in private farmsteads remain behind the scenes. A little more people remember about turkeys. In general, this state of affairs is justified. Chicken and turkey can be seen on store shelves, and quail is fashionable.
But besides these three species, there are also guinea fowls, pheasants and peacocks, as well as waterfowl species – ducks and geese.
In total, there are more than 110 species of ducks, and 30 of them live in Our Country. The domestic duck is descended from the wild mallard duck.
Mallard ducks were kept in ancient Greece, and so far they have not been fully domesticated. An indication that the domestication of the duck has not been completed is that the duck runs wild easily.
Unlike chickens, a duck that has flown away does not seek to return home, although they can be kept nearby, providing food. The feed will run out, the duck will go on a journey in search of a new feeder.
The domestic duck, having grown fat from a quiet life and easily accessible food, does not give the impression of a good flyer, but it is not. Contrary to the belief that a duck needs a run on the water to take off, it is quite capable of soaring a candle into the sky right from the spot. It’s just that the duck is often too lazy to do it. The behavior of domestic ducks is very similar to the behavior of urban pigeons: “I can fly, but I don’t want to, and I’m not afraid of people either.”
Wild mallard gave rise to almost all breeds of domestic ducks. But the differences between the breeds are small, especially compared to chickens.
It is better for a beginner to start breeding ducks with “noblewomen”, another name is “Peking duck”, as close as possible to the wild type, or with indo-ducks, they are also musky ducks.
Domestic mallards (Peking ducks)
Pictured are wild mallards. But domestics often do not differ at all in color. So if a domestic mallard joins a herd of wild ducks, it will be impossible to find it there. Unless the escaped duck will be piebald or white.
Domestic outbreds, although these ducks are often called Peking ducks, ducks can be piebald or white, as a person retains a color that is very undesirable in natural conditions.
The maximum weight of a wild mallard is 2 kg. The “noblewoman” has the same weight and dimensions.
The advantage of outbred mallards is that they have an excellently developed incubation instinct. From 6 ducks and 2 drakes without human intervention per season, you can get 150 heads of young animals weighing 1 – 1,5 kg in 2 months.
But the incubation of duck eggs is a troublesome business not only for beginners. And not even every incubator is suitable for this business. You will have to buy an automatic one with the ability to control temperature and humidity.
Muscovy duck (Indo-duck)
Its other name is Indian. And this is not a hybrid of a turkey and a duck, but also a wild species native to South America. Breeding at home has affected the variability of colors and sizes, but left intact their ability to breed offspring without the help of people.
A domesticated Indian duck weighs twice as much as a wild one. The Indian females have well-developed sexual dimorphism, the weight of the male is twice that of the female. If the weight of wild individuals is 1,3 and 3 kg, then in domestic animals the corresponding sizes are 1,8 – 3 and 4 – 6 kg.
The preservation of the wild habits of the Indochka is also manifested in the behavior of the drake. A two-year-old drake begins to chase outsiders from its territory, surpassing the gander in aggressiveness. And it pinches no worse than a goose.
In terms of meat qualities, the musky duck loses to the Beijing duck (mallard). And the plus side of musky ducks is that they don’t yell like Peking ducks.
Breeding ducks at home for beginners is best practiced on these two species.
Mullard
Perhaps this hybrid is not for beginners, but if a beginner gets mallards and indoouts without separating them, then mulard can turn out by itself.
Mulard is a product of crossing a mallard with an Indo-duck. Usually, female mallards and musky drakes are crossed. The result is larger than the parent forms and well gaining weight.
On the Internet, you can find the statement that mulard is suitable for breeding at home. Don’t believe!
Therefore, mulards are suitable only for meat. You can also get food eggs from ducks. Don’t even try to breed.
Although there may be confusion in the names. In , “mulard” is an interspecific hybrid between a mallard and an Indo-duck, and in English a mallard sounds like mallard.
Keeping ducks at home in a private backyard
I must say right away that ducks in an apartment definitely cannot be bred. Although ducks can live perfectly without water, they love to splash water from drinkers. If they do not have the opportunity to completely get into the water, then at least wet their head and neck.
Ideal conditions for keeping ducks would be the free access of the herd to the pond. But in this case, it is likely that in the fall the ducks will fly to warmer climes. Therefore, it is better to use the experience of the ancient Greeks, and keep the ducks in an aviary with a mesh stretched over the top.
Moreover, if natural breeding of ducks is planned, the aviary should be made as spacious as possible and provide nesting shelters for ducks. It can be ordinary vegetable boxes. The main requirement is the height sufficient for the free entry of the duck.
By what signs they choose their shelter, only ducks know. So just put more boxes than you have ducks.
According to the results. The best option for ducks would be a fenced aviary with a pond (it is necessary to provide a drain for water spilled by ducks), boxes for nests and a closed top. If there is no opportunity to organize a reservoir for ducks, drinkers should be chosen where the ducks cannot dive, but at the same time they will always have free access to water. They drink a lot.
With the top of the aviary open, the wings of ducks will have to be clipped twice a year after molting.
As for the winter content. Mallards winter well in open water even in the Leningrad Region. There would be food. But the water temperature in the reservoir is above zero, otherwise there would be ice. Therefore, in the absence of open water, ducks should not be left to winter in the snow. And indotoks, in general, do not need to be kept outside around the clock at sub-zero temperatures. Therefore, for the winter, ducks need a warm and dry shelter (they will wet it themselves). A shed with a positive temperature is quite suitable.
Duck mat
Ducks do not sit on the perch, they will have to be kept on the floor. In connection with the floor content, the issue of bedding is acute. Ducks will need to change bedding much more often than chickens.
The problem here is that in chickens, like in all land birds during normal bowel function, the litter is covered with a thin film that prevents it from spreading everywhere. When it gets into the sawdust, such a pile quickly gives off moisture and dries out.
Waterfowl have no such adaptation. In nature, they defecate in water and do not need thick droppings. So the duck shits a lot and liquid.
As a result, the litter quickly gets wet, mixed with diarrhea and, against the background of high humidity, begins to stink.
How to contain ducks is approximately clear. Now to figure out how to feed them.
feeding ducks
In nature, the duck collects duckweed and aquatic inhabitants from the surface of the reservoir. By the way, this is the reason why ducks are often infected with leptospira, which are well preserved in a humid environment.
At home, ducks eat the same food as chickens. Pieces of fruit can be given as supplements. They love grapes and, oddly enough, pomegranates. Grass is not eaten well, because, unlike geese, their beaks are not adapted to cutting grass. But finely chopped grass or young small sprouts will be eaten with pleasure. They can pluck leaves from bushes and trees where they can reach. If desired, you can collect duckweed from the nearest reservoir.
Ducks also love small snails. Apparently, snails replace with them the animal food that they naturally catch in the water. And at the same time, snail shells replenish calcium reserves.
Adult ducks are fed 2 times a day. Compound feed, like chickens, is given at the rate of 100 – 120 g per day per head. In order not to breed rats and mice in the aviary, you need to monitor the eating of food. Normally, if the ducks eat everything in 15 minutes.
Feed rates are regulated depending on its consumption. With the beginning of the laying period, it is necessary to give as much food as possible, since, having sat down on eggs, ducks go to feed every other time. Therefore, during the incubation period, feed consumption will decrease. Ducks will begin to consume subcutaneous fat.
Young ducks are kept separately and for him the food must stand constantly.
Breeding ducks
How to breed ducks: under a brood hen or in an incubator, it is up to the owner to decide. When breeding under a duck, a certain number of eggs are lost, since the duck lays eggs for almost a month, then sits on the eggs for a month.
If the hatched ducklings are not immediately taken away, then the duck will spend another month growing them. At the same time, even in nature, ducks manage to bring out a couple of broods (the second as insurance in case the first one dies). If the ducklings are taken away, the duck, after a few days, will begin to lay eggs again, having managed to make 3-4 egg layings during the season.
When hatching in an incubator, the duck will continue to lay eggs without wasting time hatching ducklings. This way you can get more young in a season, but you have to fiddle with the preparation and laying of eggs in the incubator, pay electricity bills and then properly disinfect the inside of the incubator so as not to infect the next batch of eggs with something.
However, all three ways can be considered: in the incubator, under the duck and mixed.
Breeding ducklings in an incubator
First of all, you will have to purchase a quality incubator. A duck egg is heavier, although it is almost the same size as a chicken egg. The duck egg has a stronger shell and a thick elastic membrane under the shell. A duck egg needs higher air humidity than a chicken egg. It is necessary to turn duck eggs 4 to 6 times a day. If we recall the higher weight of the duck egg (80 g, and the indoo has more), then you will have to think about whether the incubator motor can handle such a mass of eggs. In terms of the number of duck eggs, there will be as many as chicken ones.
At the same time, it is also necessary to maintain a certain temperature regime, since duck eggs cannot be heated all month at the same temperatures. Chicken and quail eggs in primitive “fan bowls” made from a Styrofoam box and a heating fan are thriving. Duck, goose and turkey eggs die.
Thus, an incubator with a sufficiently powerful device for turning eggs will be needed; a timer that will regulate the intervals for turning eggs; the possibility of setting various temperature conditions; the ability to adjust the humidity.
Such incubators already exist today. But they may not be at hand and you have to buy. And yes, they are quite expensive. But you can go broke once.
Selection and laying of duck eggs in the incubator
According to all instructions for the incubation of duck eggs, eggs no older than five days of age are laid in the incubator. And only indoo eggs can be up to 10 days old. It’s even better if the Muscovy duck eggs are 10 days old. Before laying in the incubator, the eggs are stored at a temperature of 8 – 13 ° C, turning them 3 – 4 times a day.
Medium-sized, clean eggs without visible shell defects are laid for incubation.
There is no need to wash off this greenish coating. This is the protective shell of the egg, consisting of fat. When breeding indouts, this plaque is recommended to be gently wiped off with a sponge (it is not erased with a sponge, only with an iron washcloth) two weeks after the start of incubation or incubation. This film does not allow air to pass to the duckling and the fetus suffocates in the egg.
But it is necessary to remove the film from the eggs of the indout during incubation and it is better to do this at the beginning so as not to overcool the eggs later. During the natural incubation of the indoo, this film is gradually erased from the egg by themselves, descending onto the eggs with a wet body. Under the indo duck, the ducklings in the egg definitely do not suffocate.
Before placing the eggs in the incubator, the eggs must be disinfected with a weak solution of potassium permanganate and the dirt that has fallen on the eggs from the wet duck paws should be carefully wiped off. She just gets wet in potassium permanganate.
As an instruction for setting the mode in each of the weeks of incubation of duck eggs, you can use the table below.
The mode of incubation for Muscovy duck eggs is different.
After the appearance of pecking, there is no need to rush the ducklings. It happens that the duckling pecked at the shell and sits in the egg for up to 2 days, since the nature of the ducklings is supposed to hatch at the same time, but some could be delayed in development and he needs to make it clear to the duck that he is alive and does not need to leave with the brood yet , leaving the duckling that did not have time to hatch to the mercy of fate.
At the same time, there is another side of the coin. If the duckling is still really weak, it will die in the egg if it is not helped. Another question is whether it is necessary to help a weak duckling. Moreover, if we start helping, then we must take into account that the incubator in this case is dangerous.
You can open a hole for a duck and even make it big. But while the duckling is gaining strength to get out of the egg, the inner membranes of the egg will dry up to his body. The incubator dries open eggs very much.
There is another danger as well. Cracking open the egg of a duckling that is not ready to hatch, you can damage the inner film, with blood vessels still filled with blood.
When the duckling is ready to emerge from the egg, all the blood and yolk goes into his body. After the duckling leaves, a film with deflated blood vessels thinner than a human hair and meconium remains on the inside of the egg.
In a duckling not ready to hatch, the external blood vessels on the egg membrane can be more than a millimeter in diameter.
Therefore, we just wait until the duckling, having gained strength and brutalized with boredom, will open the egg itself, like a tin can.
Breeding ducklings under a mother duck
A huge plus of breeding ducklings under a duck is the complete absence of hassle with eggs. Provide ducks with shelters and, at the beginning of the laying period, toss them periodically with a couple of armfuls of straw. Ducks will build nests from it themselves.
The duck starts laying eggs directly on the bare ground. While the duck lays one egg a day, she has time to collect dry vegetation for the nest. Sometimes, with an excess of building material, the nest even rises above the ground, like in wild counterparts.
From the beginning of egg laying, miracles begin. Before sitting on the eggs, the duck will lay at least 15 eggs. Usually about 20 eggs. And some specimens can lay 28 eggs. In fact, a duck can hatch no more than 15 eggs. Occasionally she gets 17 ducklings. Body size simply does not allow incubating more eggs. The rest of the eggs are adjusted for the infertility of the egg and predators.
But you should not count on 15 ducklings from each duck either. A good mother hen will hatch 15 ducklings, a foolish mother will bring 7-8 ducklings, since she, having fallen into hysterics from a passing person, pierced her claws with her claws or threw them too far from the nest and the embryo died. Therefore, when estimating the number of unborn ducklings (and you have to estimate in order to calculate brooders for them), you need to count on 10 ducklings from one duck on average.
Nevertheless, even if the ducks laid only 10 eggs, this no longer fits with the incubator storage period of 5 days, and even at a temperature of about 10 ° C. How ducks, with such long egg-laying periods, manage to breed good broods of ducklings is a mystery of nature.
Under cold rains at an air temperature of 10 – 15 ° eggs die.
There is no need to worry about the selection of unfertilized eggs and eggs with dead embryos either. After about a week of incubation, the duck begins to periodically throw eggs out of the nest. No, she is not stupid, and there is no need to return these eggs to the nest. Ducks are able to identify dead eggs and get rid of them, even if they have just begun to deteriorate. So it turns out that by the end of incubation, about 15 eggs remain under the duck, and ducklings hatch from almost all of them. Although it happens that there are a couple of pieces of dead eggs that the duck either did not notice, or they did not interfere with it, or the embryo died quite recently.
From the third week of incubation, the duck sits very tightly on the eggs, hissing and entering into a fight, if you stretch your hand towards it. Not a goose, of course, but it leaves bruises. A duck can’t compete with a man and you can drive it out of the nest. But not necessary.
With the start of hatching, the duck can go for a bite to eat if the ducklings have just pecked at the shell. Later, she does not leave the nest until the last duckling appears. But ducklings are quite capable of running away and dying.
If there are cats or other animals in the courtyard, it is better to select the hatched ducklings and place them in brooders (or just boxes with a lamp) on a litter, since while the duck is sitting out the last duckling, the first ones can already be killed by other animals. In addition, having lost a brood, a duck after a few days will begin the next cycle of oviposition.
If you leave ducklings with a duck, it will first have to be transferred to starter feed for young animals. But it is not a fact that this compound feed will go to ducklings, for which it was designed. Therefore, it is still better to raise ducklings separately.
mixed way
If the ducks started laying eggs too early and you are sure that the eggs will die from the cold, you can hatch the first batch of ducklings in an incubator. You can also collect the first eggs that ducks will start laying. If the house does not have an industrial, but a domestic incubator, then it will quickly be filled with the first eggs. And the ducks will just sit on a slightly smaller number of eggs.
Cultivation of ducklings
Ducklings are placed in a suitable container or factory-made brooder. A 40-watt electric lamp with adjustable height will be enough to replace mother’s heat for ducklings. Later, the lamp can be replaced with a less powerful one.
It is easy to determine this: they gathered under the lamp, pushing and trying to crawl closer to it – the ducklings are cold; fled to the farthest corner they could find – too hot.
Ducklings need to put a bowl of food and provide water. It is not necessary to teach them to peck food. A day after hatching, they will begin to eat on their own.
At the same time, dry compound feed does not sour, does not cling to pathogenic bacteria and does not cause intestinal upset in ducklings.
Ducklings will find water faster than food. In the case of a drinker, care must be taken so that the ducklings cannot climb into it or that they can get out of it. Since even though ducks are waterfowl, a constant stay in the water without food will have a bad effect on the duckling. However, if you put a stone in a bowl, this duckling will be quite enough to get out of the water.
The weight in the bowl has another purpose: it will prevent the ducklings from knocking over the bowl and pouring all the water onto the bedding. Living on wet litter is also bad for ducklings. They should be able to shake off the water and dry.
It is not recommended to keep ducklings in brooders for a long time. Ducklings for normal development must be able to move. Grown ducklings need to be transferred to a more spacious room. Ducklings that have already acquired feathers can be released to the main herd.
Adult ducks will beat the young for the first time. This is dangerous if there are fewer young people than adults, and not very scary. if for every adult there are ten young people. But to smooth out sharp corners at the time of meeting, you can, having released the ducklings, drive all the ducks together around the yard for a couple of circles. While they are running, they manage to forget who is new here and who is old and further conflicts are rare and not dangerous.
And the question that today, probably, will interest any beginner. Is breeding ducks profitable as a business?
Business on ducks
Quite a difficult question. Ducks, especially if they are given the opportunity to raise ducklings themselves, are definitely beneficial for the family. As already mentioned, from 6 ducks per season you can get 150 young animals for meat. That’s about 1 duck carcass every two days on the dinner table. Six months later, at the word “duck”, the eye may begin to twitch. Ducks, of course, are tasty and at the same time quite expensive if you buy them, but everything is boring.
When growing ducks on an industrial scale, that is, with a population of at least a hundred females, in addition to incubators (and here you can’t get by with boxes), you will have to think over a system for isolating ducks from the environment.
Those who advise on the Internet to keep ducks on a mesh floor or on a deep non-removable bedding, obviously, have never seen ducks and have not kept them. Therefore, they don’t know how liquid the droppings of ducks are, which will stain all the grates, and on the paddock will soak into the ground and poison the groundwater entering the well. Also, the advisers have no idea how the litter is compacted if it is not stirred up every day. A deep litter cannot be stirred up. Bacteria and mold begin to multiply in it very quickly, which, when tedding, will rise into the air and infect the birds.
In industrial complexes in the United States, ducks are kept in waterproofed bowls on a litter, daily sprinkling fresh to protect duck feet from burns that fresh droppings can cause. They change such a litter with the help of bulldozers and excavators after sending the next batch of ducks for slaughter.
Characteristics of Peking and Muscovy Ducks. Video
In summarizing, we can say that breeding and raising ducks is even easier than breeding and raising chickens, since many breeds of chickens have already lost their incubation instinct and their eggs must be incubated. With ducks, the easiest option is to let them breed on their own.