The CUTE and the UGLY About Keeping Ducks

actually i won't let you out just yet g'day i'm mike from self sufficient me and in this video i want to bring you the cute and also the ugly side of keeping ducks let's get into [Music] it radio this morning oh my goodness there's two ducklings i tell you what i faired income i only just saw that as i started the camera what i was going to say to you guys was the three of them are up the three ducks are up including the one that's supposed to be sitting on the egg so i was going to say i wonder what happened to those eggs is she still sitting on them or what's going on but here we go we've got a couple little ducklings in here how cool is that running around with mum what are you doing huh finally sitting on some eggs she's moved her nest from over there it was in that corner to here but it didn't just get to back to that corner she moved it to there first from there to there you can still see there's one egg here i don't know how many is left underneath there but she moved it from there and she was sitting there and then she went to there and then she went to here doesn't you can't see any evidence of a nest and now she's gone to there this is all in a matter of several days she just seems to keep moving her nest every couple of days which is odd look at this huffing and puffing okay i'll leave you alone he's off the nest very noisy very vocal wanted to have a drink i wonder she'll run straight back on the nest if i go in there oh i hope nothing's happened to the nest doesn't seem to be anything nefarious [Applause] there you go she's made this pile buried them has she given up on the eggs and now it's time to get back out maybe or she's just having a rest i suppose we'll see and see well it sounds like mother duck has gone back onto her eggs but i did have a look yesterday when you weren't there i did and you didn't even know that egg looks like it's cracked well here we go she was sitting in this corner for a good week and now she's moved the eggs to here one two three four five we're missing one egg she's just out at the moment having a drink and i wander around so i thought i'd come in and just check where did that yesterday i was in here and i was showing a cracked egg and i was wondering what she was going to do about it obviously she's answered my question but here she is she's sitting back it's the next day after i saw her move and she got rid of the cracked one i don't know where the cracked one went but she's back on it you've moved again right close to the door now can i assume you've lost another egg is that the reason why you moved nests [Music] soon you'll be at the door well she's gone out running again but look at the mess she's moved the nest now in the doorway and she's just left the eggs scattered so does that mean they've none of them have survived maybe she's in a state she's carrying on like a pork chop out there making noises trying to eat maybe she's really super hungry but yeah so what do we make of that it's not looking good is it nest sort of looks discarded let's see where this duck is now i can hear her okay she's gone from inside the door to moved over there and she's off her eggs and there's well there's one less again there's three in a row one looking bad on the outside okay ten minutes later she's back on all four of those eggs so who knows that purple looking one didn't look too good i really do need to get in there and organize those little ducklings and mother duck put them in an isolation area give them some water give them some food and that way then they'll be safe in the meantime till i get organized i'll just throw this water in the pan in just a spot you go out you go you go go come on dad no not you you go look after your babies right now i've got her in there with those two perfect actually i should have a look and see what was left of that that nest right so here we go there's the hatch or is that one that didn't hatch no i think that's a duckling that never made it so there you go never quite made it died that was one of the brown ones that i saw that i thought was buggered that one obviously never hatched out so out of all of them only one only two hatched she finally went back into that corner that's must be where they've hatched out yeah so that's interesting what i want to do is put her in there with the two ducklings see that they've already made another nest that won't be viable no one's been sitting on them so i've got to get them out yeah this will be fine old base of a drinking container that i kept [Laughter] this is going to be just a temporary thing i'm going to make them a whole different area and i'll give you some reasons why in a sec as well so that can go there and now let's get some food this isn't a duckling mix this is just a chicken mix it'll do for now until i get some duckling proper duckling mix did you notice that change of color from yellow to blue i'll put them just in the center there where will i put this now i just stood on a duck egg all the chickens will clean that up okay there we go that'll work she'll make a little nest in there keep them warm and they'll be safe in here i think i'll get mum first let's see how that works out [Laughter] i'll act like i'm going for the babies but i'm actually going for her [Music] stop it stop it stop it go in there [Music] is daddy ah aren't they dating beautiful couple of apple yards they even smell nice wait till they get a bit older okay here you go mum eat and drink we'll put those eggs in the compost pile and that should be it so yeah it was a fair saga i have to say i wasn't sure like i said that it was going to happen but at least you've got two so that's good but let's move on to the ugly i've lost a significant amount of chickens over the last few months which is of course not good by anyone's books strike he's not trying to mount her he's trying to bloody there's something something going on here this fella here is attacking the chickens and i don't like it if he keeps doing it it'll be bye bye ducky and of course after examining and observing what was going on down here because you always want to find out what the problem is it seemed fairly obvious it was the male duck chasing down the weakest chickens and trying to take them out for some reason the thing is i never actually saw him doing it i mean i had seen the drake mount the chickens and annoy them and then the chickens would get away or i would scare him off but i actually hadn't seen him kill a chicken but i suspected that's what was happening because i was finding the odd dead bird maybe once every two weeks outside of the pen even though the hens were locked up there with the drake there wasn't any deaths inside the pen which i found a bit perplexing [Music] anyway one day recently i was down in the pen collecting eggs and this happened here it is and i'm in here it's a little hawk that's what it is and it's staying around that's what's been chasing the hands in gone now flew through there it it traced the hands all the way in here i was just in getting some eggs and the ducks and the hens all ran in here i only just released them because i was thinking what was attacking them they they say that's what's doing it a little hawk and it's willing to come all the way into here well that is interesting never seen that before not that size because i was wondering if it was a large hawk or an eagle usually the hens are on top of it i see them coming in even i can see them coming in and they they find it hard to navigate around the gum trees here it's it's difficult so that they just don't bother never had a eagle attack or anything like that i've seen the eagles come in but they're just too big the wind spans too big to to fly around and to navigate and get into the coops they run straight they run straight for the shelters or in here but i didn't anticipate that a small frog hawk or whatever that is you guys might be able to give me a better idea i didn't anticipate that one of them would be knocking off my hands i thought it might have been the duck because of all that commotion and problems he's been doing bullying the birds and i've read that ducks are able to kill hens but it hasn't been him it's been a hawk that's been attacking a small hawk you know what some of you are going to say mark get a rooster and that'll stop it yeah probably it's just that you know just don't like roosters and that's why i decided to put up this tape as a way to see if i could deter the hawk or change behavior and i've heard that tape could actually work this reflective tape and you can see it in the camera it is fairly effective at being reflective isn't it well just found another sad discovery another dead bird this one i know she was killed by the duck because he was chasing her yesterday i thought she was fine to be able to get away from him but there's no way she could have been killed by anything else you can see there's been trauma to the head and uh i know that's because that's how the duck has attacked the other birds she was hopping up here several times she'd be hopping up here i'd notice that when i come down to let the birds out um and now in hindsight i realize that it's probably because of the duck but outside she would get away from me easy enough because she was light and nimble and i didn't think much of it my main concern was the hawk which we haven't had a hawk attack since but because she was locked in here you know she was locked in this area nothing could have got her except for the duck and uh here he is over there with his mate i'm gonna have to now think of a different way to keep my poultry it looks like i might have to separate the ducks and the chickens in light of those events of the drake attacking the hens or some of the hens i started thinking there's other things that annoy me about ducks and that is how messy they are you can see the duck drinker here it's just a stinky mess every day it needs to be cleaned out and you can see how i've got the chicken's drinker is up and elevated i do that to keep it away from the ducks because the ducks not only drink their own water and dunk their heads and snot in it and make it all yucky and throw water and vomit in it or whatever it's just an awful thing to clean out every day they also get into the chicken drinkers and muddle and mess them up well they've muddied up that water already doesn't take them long does it so i'm keen to know what you think what do you think of my plan what experience have you had with ducks and chickens this never happened to me before and i've been keeping them for over a decade together a bit disappointing bit of a wake-up call i'm not ignorant to the fact that i know that drake's can be a problem with chickens i know i've known that for a long time but it's just never happened i know that drake's can try to mate with chickens and that can even kill them but i'd never seen it and i'd seen it as so many other places where people keep a mixture of poultry together and hasn't been a real issue but it is now and i've got a like a responsible poultry or animal owner i've got to now make plans to to deal with it and fix it up so i'm going to but i'd be interested to know your experience especially those you know more hardcore homesteaders than i am i'm mainly a veggie fruit and type of growing guy i don't keep larger animals we don't have the property size here to be able to do that and we don't have the regulations we're not allowed to keep large animals here anyway so like pigs and that i'd love to but we just don't have it one day maybe we might get some land to be able to do that but here i am digressing again let me know your thoughts down below so i can read them and formulate and maybe even make a better opinion talking about pigs that's all folks so yeah write them down let me know and hopefully we can get somewhere yeah so that is the cute and the ugly of duck keeping in my experience anyway hope you enjoyed this video if you did make sure you give it a big let's not say ugly let's go cute thumbs up you can't deny it those little ducklings they're so cute and they're the ones that have made it through to the end against all the odds so i think that's pretty special any life is special and i think that's pretty cool so anyway big thumbs up thanks for watching subscribe if you haven't already share the video around bye for now bye for now cheers you

Channel: Self Sufficient Me

Views: 111,733

Keywords: keeping ducks with chickens, can i keep ducks and chickens together, keeping ducks and chickens together, keeping ducks and chickens, duck, chicken, ducklings, ducks, homesteading, chickens, keeping ducks

Id: P--LDCqBw8k

Length: 19min 52sec (1192 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 23 2021