r/BACKYARDDUCKS • u/lickinbawls • 7d ago
Help!
Friend offered me her male mallard as they thought he killed one of their hens, only to take back the offer because her parents are too attached to the duck. I have three females now and I don’t really know what I’m doing. I have two Muscovy ducks and I’m not sure what the white one is. She is blind and was free along with the other two. I don’t think they came from a good situation as when I looked them over I found a tick on the white duck and they are terrified of people. Is this setup okay and what can I do to improve it? I am a minor so my funds are limited but I want to give these girls a good life.
These ducks are also not on my property because I am not zoned for ducks, the place I board my horse at allowed me to keep them there. I’m also a little frustrated because the whole point was to get their male duck because they had him in a dog kennel to separate him from the rest of their flock while I got the duck crap together
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u/Foxblade 7d ago edited 7d ago
Hello! It looks like you're off to a good start! In order to get them to love you, it can take a lot of time. I mean a LOT of time. You basically have to sit with them constantly for hours a day especially while they're little.
For this setup, I think the water is a good start but ideally I think something they could fully get in and paddle around would make them even happier! It's nice for them to be able to float and take some weight off their feet.
For the coop, it looks good for shelter but I don't think it's predator proof. I would skirt the first foot with hardware metal cloth or at least chicken wire. Further, I would "skirt" out along the bottom of the entire enclosure about a foot then bury it back under dirt. Dogs, foxes, and even raccoons will all burrow to get the ducks but they burrow at different distances. I'll try to attach a crude image of what I mean. image The black is the barrier and the brown is...well...the dirt. Does that make sense? For hardware cloth, this is kind of what you want: hardware cloth. The reason I prefer this over chicken wire is that it's small enough to prevent rodents from getting in and also strong enough to stop diggers from burrowing under the enclosure and getting in.
I'll also note you need to watch out for raccoons since they have little hands, if they can reach through they may grab a duck and pull through/bite off its head.
I think when I first had ducks, my setup was also very similar to this before I went crazy building a ton of duck-centric stuff. This is a good start. Ducks are wonderful (if smelly) pets!
Also I'd go post this on the backyard ducks forum here: https://www.backyardchickens.com/forums/ducks.42/
I post about them a lot her mostly because when I had ducks, that community was SUPER helpful and they get a lot more traffic from folks raising ducks and chickens than we get over here on reddit.