I bought a few Rouen meat ducks after digging my small pond. They look like oversized mallards that are too big to fly. They look nice, but they where mean and they scared away every wild duck that would show up. After they died, I didn't want ducks anymore.
A little over a year ago, my brother passed away. He was raising mallards for dog hunting clubs in the Dallas area. He sold them for $15 each and would usually sell 200 every other week for most of the year. It was good money, but a huge pain in the rear to do. I sold most of them to the guys in the different clubs, and kept about 40 for my pond. One drake for every ten hens.
I clipped their wings so they would get used to my pond and not fly off the first day. Once their feathers grew back, some of them left, but most of them stuck around. They liked the 3/4 acre pond, the green grass in the pasture, and the chicken feed at the barn.
We enjoy hearing them, and since they have been here, other ducks have joined them. Even Canadian Geese have been here for a week or two.
Biggest surprise to the mallards is their drive to reproduce. It's kind of like having a super broody chicken, but at a stronger level. And all of the hen mallards are like this!!!!! They had nests everywhere, and they had huge numbers of ducklings. Some days, it looked like there might be a hundred baby ducks zipping across the pond. They are super fast swimmers, and they play constantly.
I guess about half of them left once they grew up, but enough stayed to increase our overall numbers to 100, give or take a dozen. It's hard to count them since they like to bunch up in separate areas, but they also like to hide in the brush, or on the island.
The best surprise was the arrival of the Black Bellied Whistling Ducks. They just started showing up one day. I thin it was a dozen at first, then it slowly increased to 30 or so. Then that doubled. I think we've had 100 of them here on several days, but that seems to be the max, and their numbers will go back down for awhile, then back up again. They really just like to spend the day at the edge of the water, or a few inches in the water. They also like to stand on the fence, all in a row. What's cool about them is their call. It's a whistle that can be very loud when they all get into it, but most of the time, it's just background noise.
A few months ago, we had some ducklings hatch just before Christmas. There was 6 with one hen, then the next day, there where only 4, and then just 2. We caught those two and raised them in the barn like we do the chickens. Then we caught more and then a few more for a total of a dozen. We thought they would all die if they where left on their own in the middle of winter. What we didn't know is how messy they are. They drain the waterers in hours. We put two massive waters in their cage and they where empty by the end of the day. We split them up into two cages and it didn't change. They also create a massive mess. The walls around their cages where covered in poop splatter of some kind. It's like they mixed their poop with the water and sprayed it everywhere. It's REALLY BAD!!!!
Those baby ducks are now with the rest of them and doing fine. They haven't developed their adult feathers yet, so they are easy to see with the rest of the ducks. I don't think we will do that again, if they are born just before Winter, I think we'll let their moms raise them instead of catching them and doing it in the barn.
We get duck eggs mixed in with chicken eggs. Usually the chickens avoid the duck nests, but some ducks will climb into a chicken nesting bowl on the ground and leave their eggs there. Last Summer we started putting plastic dog houses out for the chickens and the ducks. They are two piece dog houses that we use both halves as small houses for them. Inside we can fit two or three black rubber dog food bowls into each house for the chickens to lay eggs in. This works a lot better then a wood nesting box three feet up on the wall in the chicken coop. We get 3 to 4 times as many eggs in those plastic dog houses then we do in the coops. From what we where told, they prefer to lay eggs closer to the ground. Normally in winter, we might get a dozen eggs a day. Right now we're over 5 dozen a day. It's never been this good in winter before.
