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<\/p>\nIf you live on a small farm or homestead, or even if you have a large yard in town, ducks can be an excellent addition to your outdoor setting. Ducks are great egg layers, roast duck is delicious, and your friendly flock will make short work of garden pests. In this article, we review what it takes to keep ducks as pets or livestock and provide information and resources to help you get started. Read on to learn more on how to raise a duck.<\/p>\n
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If you have to choose, ducks can be a better choice for a homestead than chickens because they are hardier and easier to care for. Furthermore, they lay eggs all year round, but chickens tend to slack off in the winter.<\/p>\n
Ducks mature very quickly. Ducklings can grow into meat birds in just a couple of months. Within five months of hatching, young hens begin laying eggs that hatch<\/a> relatively quickly.<\/p>\n Duck eggs<\/a> are large, tasty and very nutritious. Some people find them a bit too rich to eat scrambled, fried or boiled, but no one can complain about the fullness they bring to any baked goods. Here are some typical ways how to use them<\/a> in your kitchen.<\/p>\n Ducks are a valuable addition to any homestead, small farm or large, fenced yard for these reasons:<\/p>\n If you have a flock of ducks roaming your property, they\u2019ll make short work of all sorts of bugs, including ticks, and they\u2019ll nose around in loose soil to locate and gobble up grubs in the garden.<\/p>\n Duck eggs have thicker shells, higher yolks, and greater vitamin and mineral content than chicken eggs. They can\u2019t be beat when it comes to baking. Bread baked with duck eggs has a beautiful golden appearance.<\/p>\n You store duck eggs exactly as you do chicken eggs (here is our selection of cartons<\/a>), but they stay fresh much longer because of their sturdier shells.<\/p>\n Duck meat is moist, rich and flavorful. It does have high fat content, but it\u2019s all natural fat, and we need that in moderation.<\/p>\n They are friendly and personable and fun to watch. They waddle and quack amiably, and they do not crow at dawn!<\/p>\n At the end of the growing season, keep your ducks in your garden plot for a few days. They\u2019ll eat up all the leftover vegetation, along with any pest insect eggs that may be lurking on the undersides of leaves. They\u2019ll turn the earth and eat any grubs they may find, and they\u2019ll fertilize the soil with their droppings.<\/p>\n If you let them run loose on your lawn, they\u2019ll eat up weeds and lawn pests and help keep your grass trimmed down so that you don\u2019t have to mow it so often.<\/p>\n Ducks cannot really be house trained. They are well known for being messy, and there\u2019s a good reason for this. They have absolutely no control over whether or where they poop, but that can be a good thing when you\u2019re talking lawn and garden!<\/p>\n Duck poop is not especially messy out on the open ground, so having ducks add a little fertilizer to the soil where ever they go is not much of a problem. You can also add their soiled bedding from their pen and coop to your compost heap to enrich it.<\/p>\n They are calmer than chickens, far more amiable than geese<\/a>, and they waddle about more slowly than either of these two types of domestic fowl. If you want to move adult or baby ducks from one place to another, you can just stroll along slowly behind them and direct them with your arms.<\/p>\n Generally speaking, ducks can do quite well in very cold or very hot weather as long as you can provide shelter, shade and fresh water. Different breeds of ducks do better in different climates, but there\u2019s sure to be a breed that suits your climate perfectly.<\/p>\n Although chickens<\/a> are well known for pecking each other to death, eating their own eggs and behaving in unpleasant ways, ducks don\u2019t do that. They are generally friendly and amiable to one another, and they do not have peculiar eating habits if you keep them well fed.<\/p>\n Begin by deciding why you want ducks. Do you want meat, eggs, pets or all three? As with chickens, different breeds of ducks are better suited to different purposes.<\/p>\n For meat production, Muscovies are a good choice. For egg production, Khaki Campbells are well-liked. If you want an all around breed for both meat and egg production, you may want to go with the classic white Pekin.<\/p>\n Do you want ducks to produce just for you, or do you want to make a profit?<\/p>\n Not only are duck eggs bigger, tastier and more nutritious than chicken eggs, you can also sell them for a lot more. If you want to make money with your ducks, having a few more laying hens than you need can be a very cost effective way to go.<\/p>\n Duck meat is also somewhat in demand and can sell for a nice profit considering that your ducks will be healthiest, happiest and fattest if you make sure they get plenty of kitchen, yard and garden scraps and free range bugs along with their regular diet.<\/p>\n Luckily, most breeds of ducks are fairly amiable, and if you get them when they are ducklings and handle them<\/a> a great deal, they will become good outdoor pets. If your main purpose for keeping ducks is having pets<\/a>, you might as well also enjoy the eggs by choosing an egg laying breed.<\/p>\n1. Ducks provide natural pest control!<\/h3>\n
2. Ducks lay big, rich, nutritious eggs<\/h3>\n
3. Roast duck is a luxury<\/h3>\n
4. Ducks are charming<\/h3>\n
5. Ducks are good garden helpers<\/h3>\n
6. Ducks are good lawn helpers, too!<\/h3>\n
7. Ducks turn your kitchen and yard scraps into organic fertilizer<\/h3>\n
8. Ducks are easy to control and manage<\/h3>\n
9. Ducks are tougher than chickens<\/h3>\n
10. Ducks are not cannibals<\/h3>\n
How Do You Decide What Kind Of Ducks To Get?<\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\nDo You Want Pet Ducks?<\/h3>\n