Everthing you need to know about keeping ducks but were afraid to ask

I'm Sally Coulthard. I'm an author and smallholder and I've spent two decades building the good life with my family and animals in the Yorkshire countryside. One of the best bits about smallholding is spending time with the animals and I absolutely love our ducks. Ducks are a brilliant good life animal. You can keep them for eggs, meat, pest control or even just as lovely pets. With their waddling, quacking and antics they bring us hours of pleasure and in return we provide them with as much space, water and good food as they can eat. So this is Steve and he's a runner duck. In fact I've got three runner ducks called Steve. They're all called Steve because they're absolutely identical and I can't tell them apart. I love runner ducks. They're really docile, very gentle ducks. The female runner duck lays lots of lovely eggs every year. In fact they're such good layers that they often lay as they're running around. But runner ducks also are fantastic at nibbling amongst the crops without damaging them, taking all their pests and beasts away from my lovely vegetables. Anyway I'm going to put Steve down now and show you what he does best. When it comes to keeping ducks it's important just to say something about what they eat. Now some chicken food isn't actually suitable for ducks either because it's not got the right balance of nutrients or sometimes have additives that can make ducks poorly. So it's really important when you're buying duck food just to make sure that it's suitable for ducks and waterfowl. We buy a mix that's full of delicious ingredients from split wheat to sunflower seeds or even peanuts and linseed in there. Wow it's almost like a breakfast cereal. Anyway they love that and we give them a scoop of that every morning. It's also just worth pointing out that ducks really need water but they don't need a pond. The reason ducks need water is actually for two reasons. The first is that to digest their food properly they need to be taking on water. But the second reason is also that ducks need to be able to submerge their head in clean water and that's so that they can clean their nostrils and clean their eyes and keep themselves really healthy. I've started using these trugs with flexible sides. There's a couple of good reasons for this. One is that they're nice and light so they're really easy to tip out and clean. The second is actually for a safety reason which is that if you have small children it can be a bit dangerous having a body of water just hanging about in your garden. These are great because their sides are flexible so hopefully if someone fell against it it should push the sides and hopefully not be too dangerous. Anyway I fill this with clean water and clean it out maybe once every two or three days. Ducks are spectacularly messy when it comes to mud and water and they'll often drink from here but splash it over the sides and then paddle in the mud and use their beaks to really burrow in the ground. So you don't have to be too precious about where you keep ducks because especially in the winter months they make a lot of mess. Now like lots of poultry ducks need somewhere safe to sleep at night but it can be fairly basic. This is just a dog kennel that we've adapted and we've put some wheelbarrow wheels on the side so we can wheel it around the orchard. A few key things to know. The first is that duck housing tends to need a big entrance. Ducks are like rowdy teenagers and they always rush at a space together unlike chickens which tend to go into their coop one by one. So if you have a big doorway it means they can all rush in together. The second thing is the ramp. Now ducks have really surprisingly delicate feet and so they can be easily damaged on rough wood or nails things like that so we've covered this with a piece of artificial turf and that gives them something to grip as they're climbing up that won't damage their feet. In terms of space each duck needs about 50 centimetres by 50 centimetres floor space so that's kind of roughly the size of this piece of turf but what they don't need is a perch. Ducks sleep on the floor and so we just have to make sure they've got lots of lovely clean bedding. I use wood shavings but you could also use straw and I clean that out maybe once every few weeks because unlike chickens ducks are incredibly tidy housekeepers and actually keep their coop really nice and clean. So the ramp is also the door which is nice and secure because it's really important to keep the ducks safe at night. There are quite a few predators around badgers but predominantly foxes so I also make sure that I've got a really sturdy latch that can't easily be pushed open by a wild animal and now they're all safely tucked away and I'll show you a great trick later on for how to encourage your ducks to go to bed. One of the really brilliant things about keeping ducks is just how robust they are. They seem to live long happy lives we've had ones for at least 10 years and they don't seem to suffer from all the pests and diseases that often afflict chickens so they're a brilliantly easy maintenance bird. Now I absolutely love keeping ducks but one of the only downsides is that unlike chickens they don't put themselves to bed at night so come the evening it's actually down to me to get them into the coop. Now I've learned a really easy technique that I want to share with you for basically how to herd ducks. Step one is to teach ducks where their home is and I do this by encouraging them to go into their bed using a handful of grain and creating a fence that funnels them into the doorway. Once they get used to that and the idea that a handful of grain equals bedtime and a treat then we move on to stage two and that involves not giving them any grain but still using the fences to funnel them and encourage them into the coop. After about three or four weeks the ducks have got used to that routine and I choose a phrase that they'll recognise something like bedtime duckies and they'll associate those words with bedtime. Then by the time they've got used to that eventually you can get rid of the fence, you can get rid of the handful of grain, you save bedtime duckies and hopefully they'll go into their coop. So this is Dolly and her ducklings and she's a muscovy and I absolutely love muscovy ducks. Now most domestic ducks are all related to the wild mallard but muscovies are a completely different breed and they are really different from domestic ducks. They can fly, they prefer to roost on perches unlike normal ducks which will just sleep on the floor of their hut but they do lay lots of delicious eggs and they make brilliant mothers. As you can see Dolly's got seven ducklings and she's keeping a really careful guard on them. They're quiet and very friendly so a great breed for families. If you want to buy ducks you can do it one of three ways. The cheapest way is to buy fertile eggs and hatch them at home in your own incubator but you can also buy ducklings or fully grown adults. Now I tend to do a mixture of all three different methods depending on the time of year but whatever you do you have to buy from a reputable breeder. Now you can either find those online but if you can try and buy locally. That means that the eggs or the ducks don't have to travel very far. So this is Terry and June and they are a devoted couple and they're an unusual breed called buff orpingtons. Actually June is a pure breed buff orpington and Terry's a cross. Now I love keeping buff orpington ducks. They're a rare breed so they're quite unusual but they're huge as well and so quite docile and they don't go anywhere in a hurry which means they're great unpanicky birds to have around the garden. People traditionally keep buff orpingtons as a dual purpose bird and what that means is that they're both brilliant for eggs and they also make great meat birds. But we don't eat our ducks on our farm we just keep them for eggs and pest control and they live out very long happy lives here. Now we've kept lots of different varieties of ducks over the years. If I'm just starting out I have to say runners are an absolute doddle. They're fun, they're full of character and they'll bring you hours of entertainment. So people often ask me can you keep ducks and chickens together? Now I'm really happy keeping our ducks and chickens together but sometimes cockerels and ducks can fight so it's worth just keeping an eye on the of hens to cockerels to ducks but in general if you've got placid hens and placid ducks they should be absolutely fine.