UK duck owners????????

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Hello

I was wondering - if you lived in the uk and had ducks how big is your garden?? How do you deal with the duck poop? and reducing the smell and the flies???

All replies welcome on the flies and smell :D

Thanks
 
Hiii,

I live in S.wales. In a built up area with just an average medium sized garden for a 3 bed semi house.

I have a built in duck pen running up one side of the garden. The pen is a nightmare, everymorning I open the gate and let them out of the pen to roam the grass to try to spread out the muck a bit! But the pen, i have been bedding down with straw as an experiment and it works well but no its getting to the point where it's just not rotting down so looks like i'm going to have to fork out for a small skip and pull it all up :-)11

Maybe I was stupid hoping it would rot down as fast as i put it down. But I dont get flies as much but, i get slike zillions of these tiny little mothy looking kind of things if anybody knows what they are?? and how to stop them?

I cant smell them though, only when i tip out waters etc its smells for a few minutes before it goes into the ground, how do you manage? I need a big field and a nice big farm house thankyou -please! lol :D
 
Thanks for your reply - I have a 9 meter by 10 meter garden and they have free range all day and are locked in a duck house at night. Im sure I can smell them all day :( - hubby thinks its up my nose. lol.
 
Maybe i just got nice neighbours and a blocked nose lol, how many have you got? I got 6 but as long as i keep the pen open i keep food and water troughs etc in the pen to prevent them muddying areas of the grass, not sure how much of the duck poo my dogs eat too!!
 
I have 4 pekins - We have only had them a week. I keep the food and water away from each other. So worried about them smelling and having to get rid of them.
 
Hiya :)

new member here!

I have 8 ducks, 5 pekins and 3 buffs. I have a 80 by 40 foot garden with a 15,000 liter pond. The entire garden is surrounded by 6foot electric fencing and they have a 6ft by 4ft shed to sleep in at night.

As for the smell, I have had no complaints from the neighbours. BUT my ENTIRE garden is covered in duck poo, constantly. It doesn't biodegrade fast, unless it rains, but it doesn't smell.

If you have your ducks in a pen, the pen will need to be moved very regularly to prevent the build up of pathogens due to the sheer amount of poo ducks produce!

They will naturally poo more near a water source but also need water fairly close to their food source as they need water to wash down their food. Ideally keep the water and food a couple of feet apart.

I have to fully clean out my duck shed once a week and top up the wood shavings every day. I dispose of the waste every week at the local recycling facility, they allow it to go in with garden waste.

Ducks are better off on grass than straw as straw harbors mold when it gets damp and mold causes a myriad of health issues for ducks. If they are on straw it needs to be totally replenished and cleaned out at least once a week.

Sorry for the mammoth response!

Zo
x
 
EM-1(efective microoranizms)are great to eliminate all kind of smels,they also help with composting everything down.
 
i have an 80 foot garden. 25 foot ish has been fenced off for the chickens and ducks but as they have multiplyed iv opened the garden but as soon as numbers gone down i think gate will go back up. iv got so many compost boxes that do fill up quick, i really should clean up garden more often
 
Hi, i dont really get an issue with smells, only from stale water when i empty it out, i clean the ducks out once every 2weeks in the summer and once a week in the winter months. keep the food away from water and i clean there pond in the garden out once a week. Also there feeder is on the patio so all can be swept up and put in the bin. The only minor issue i have is a few flies in the run on the patio, but i disinfect it once a month and i've never had a complaint from the neighbours
 
I keep mine in grass runs until the Autumn when they all go in together into a hardstanding run with access to grass only on dry days.

Duck poo will wash away when fresh, far more easily than chicken poo. I spray the hose to wash concentrated areas so it disolves into the grass daily when I turn out their tubs.

My parents keep ducks on concrete hardstanding. They let the ducks out for 4 to 6 hours a day into the garden / pond and hose the concrete hardstanding area out daily. There is a drain near the hardstanding to prevent mud / muck in the garden. There's a small tub for drinking / washing and food in the hardstanding area. This seems to work really well.
 
Hi!!!! Have decided to get a pet duck this year. However, I realise that I have a south facing window. Will this present a problem come winter time? Any advice from duck owning viewers will be appreciated.
 
Hello Duck Rogers and welcome to the group :)

This is predominantly a UK forum I think but we have members far and wide.

I am assuming you are looking to get a house duck? Great you are doing research first :) Apologies if I have the wrong end of the stick but I will continue this post in regard to a single house duck.

Ducks are flock animals as such prefer to spend their days with other duckies rather than being alone. A single duck will be a miserable duck sadly and although (thanks to the 'Friends' phenomena) some people in the USA have single house ducks, it really isnt in the best interest of the duck.

Interesting question about the window. Light is very important to all birds, ducks especially. They need to get at LEAST 15 minutes of natural light outdoors (not through a window) to be able to synthesise some of their vitamin requirements.

Ducks also spend the majority of their day foraging, if you have an indoor duck then it wont have any foraging opportunity and this may create problems for the duck. They are also extremely mucky, pooping every 15 minutes or so.

Duckies may also suffer being inside as they cant cope with warm temperatures very well and irregular light patterns can cause problems with their reproductive systems.

If you end up with a fella, you also have to consider aggression issues which will come when he matures.

There are many reasons why a single house duck isnt a good idea for you and the duck.

BUT if you do want ducks and you can house them outside in a group of at least 2/3 then they are truly wonderful animals that give a huge amount of pleasure!

Please feel free to ask lots of questions!
zo
x
 
Hello new quacking friends!

We live in a corner plot, with an area of land that’s 8m long by 3m wide running up the side of our house (so the bedrooms and living areas over look it.) Theres a streetlamp next to our fence so its never completely dark there. We would love to get some feathered friends to help with my egg addiction. We toyed with the idea of chickens, but I love ducks and their more quirky personalitites. Having not had ducks before I have no idea what to do! I have so many thoughts running round in my head.

Breeds of duck – I’m thinking either a khaki Campbell or Indian runner ducks. I hear both of these have good egg production, and importantly are fairly quiet. We do have double glazing but we also have neighbours on one side. Any one got any thoughts on what may be better? I’m thinking of getting two to start with, then maybe introducing another 2 in a couple of years time so that we still have eggs once the old girls who have stopped laying (I don’t have the heart to kill them). Are two females ok?

Housing – there are so many duck houses out there. Does anyone feel plastic is better than wood? It’s a lot more expensive that’s for sure. They seem so small, but im guessing in winter (in the UK) they need a small house so they can huddle together. My biggest concern is the run, or the size of the run. For 2-4 birds how much of a run do they need? Does it need to be high – im guessing that helps the human cleaner deal with the poo?! They will be in there almost all of the time, coming out for an hour some nights when we get home. I have seen foxes so they cant be out in the dark. I’ve read a lot that you need to move the run around. The patch of land has next to no grass left as its all dead, and we don’t mind if it gets all churned up, when we no longer have the ducks we will just relay the grass. With this in mind, do we still need to move the pen? If the size of 3m x 2m is good enough for all day use, we could move it from one patch to another. By the time we have the house and a plastic paddling pool there wont be much room for walking around!

That’s the burning questions for now! I’m off to finish clearing the land. Very excited!

Thanks so much.
 
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