A few months ago, my sister got ducklings.
My kids saw them and fell in love.
It has been a battle since then between them and us on whether we should get ducks.
As of yesterday, the kids won.
Our Argument
We had originally been telling them no ducks until we got the old tin barn cleaned out and sanitized and repaired.
One of the previous owners had chickens (we assume) at some point and the coop was part of the barn.
The roosts are disgusting. The floor is full of trash, old metal, insulation, pieces of the roof, piles of dirt… and we don’t know what else. This is as far as we’ve explored it so far.
The door to the coop is nonexistent, the framing around the door and window are broken and disintegrating, the roof has a hole in it, the walls look like they caught on fire at some point and most the insulation is missing.
The storage/feed room connected to the coop is in just as bad condition, with shattered glass and broken furniture added in.
The run fencing has long since collapsed and 2 sides the fencing is missing entirely. Just the posts are left and they need pulled and replaced. There are all kinds of saplings and vegetation and overgrowth.
As we are working on a budget, we told the kids no ducks until all this got repaired because we didn’t think that we could provide proper care for them without a run and coop.
We already have temporary pens set up against the house for the chickens and rabbits, there just wasn’t room for ducks and a duck pool.
Their Argument
My 11 year old daughter, Teagan, has been at the forefront of this duck debate from the get go.
She argued that they were cute.
She argued that they would eat more bugs than the chickens and help eat down the grass.
She argued that they would give us bigger eggs.
She argued that we could hatch ducklings and make money.
She argued that they aren’t any harder to take care of than chickens.
She argued that we could put them in her bedroom. (Not that we would ever allow that!)
She argued that she would buy them and their feed so it wouldn’t cost us anything. (Except for my time to care for them while she’s at school, her dad’s, and work. Oh, and the cost of building materials to house them.)
Then… she found out that folks use ducks to start training border collies to herd. My mother raises border collies. So her argument became that we could rent the ducks out to my mother to train her dogs to herd.
I’m sure there were a few more arguing points in there, but these are the ones I remember.
The Final Battle
The Mister found a rabbit hutch on Facebook Marketplace that my daughter’s grandma had listed. She didn’t realize that Teagan had rabbits at our house.
So we made arrangements to go pick up the hutch. It came up in conversation that a cousin might have 2 rabbits to rehome.
In the process of following that lead, it was discovered that the cousin’s dad was tired of buying duck feed and wanted to rehome their 3 ducks.
I’m not real sure how, but somehow we came to agree on taking the ducks. Didn’t get to add 2 more rabbits to the family though.
The deal was originally to get them and use them to generate an income either butchering them or selling them. (This was agreed upon before picking them up, they were aware of the plans.)
We, however, had a very traumatic trip home involving a wreck, a loose duck, and playing duck duck goose in a bean field.
So when the Mister got home that night, I was telling him about the ducks and what I had learned about them so far and he looked at me for a moment… and told me we could keep them if I wanted!
As I am going to be the one taking care of all the animals, including my daughter’s rabbits and chickens, now that school has started he said I needed to make sure I could take on more animals. Also had to figure out a pen for them.
As we are currently not using our fenced in backyard, I thought that would be the perfect place for them! They have plenty of shade, lots of tall grass which means lots of bugs, and its right next to the house so we don’t have to worry as much about predators.
We can’t get the mower in there anyway and while I use it to grow my rabbit and chicken forage for “stuck inside days” (when they can’t free range), they don’t go through enough to keep it down.
So the ducks being in there are the perfect solution! We also were able to add our juvenile chickens in with them during the day. Since the ducks aren’t flying out the chicks stay in the fence as well, which allows them a safer free range environment.
So overall, everyone got exactly what they wanted! Now to just wait and see when they start laying (all 3 are females) and if the family likes duck eggs!
Do you have ducks? What is your #1 piece of advice for new duck owners?? Tell us below!!
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