I feel like I can write a book about all the adventures we have gone through with our animals.

Having backyard chickens + ducks is an adventure. A big adventure. Your emotions will be tested along with your mental strength.

Let me break it down - I thought free range was the way to go. Let them explore the yard + wander free wherever their little chicken + duck hearts took them. Nope.

Our wildest story is that of the bobcat. Back when we were free ranging our chickens we had a stalker. A very cute stalker I might add. He did get a chicken so there’s that but for two hours my husband and our dog tried to chase him away. He persisted. Like did not want to leave without all the chickens. Eventually night came and he was gone- But dang! Didn’t think that would happen.

Next up hawks. So many hawks. During our free range period we have had maybe 10 get taken. Once they find a spot with easy food - they don’t leave.

That’s why I recommend keeping them in a safe fenced in area. We do sometimes let them out before dusk so that they can have an adventure on our land. Definitely not everyday and not on the same days. Just in case the predators are watching and studying us. We do have a ton of tree cover so letting them wander freely for a few hours, every once and a while, we have deemed safe.

Keeping Chicks

Brooder :: They need a big bin with pine shavings & containers for chicken starter feed + water

Location :: We always keep our babies inside our home. They start out in our walk in closet - just because I’m a nervous mama and want them close to check on. I do wake up at 3am every night to give them more food + water. Yes, you can call this my mama instinct. They now have graduated to our mudroom. Anywhere you keep these babes need to be in a safe area away from other animals + children.

Heat lamp :: I have had a few bulbs pop on me so I am very cautious about them. Keeping chicks & ducklings at the correct temperature is key for growth and survival. Get yourself a brooder thermometer - although your babies will tell you when they are too hot or cold as well.

Shivering means they are too cold and when they pant with their mouths open while laying flat with their wings spread - they are too hot. Adjust as needed.

That’s all! We clean their bin every other day just because we have a ton of chicks in there. We take them all out on our kitchen floor and just spend time connecting with them. We compost so I dump their dirty shavings right in our pile outside + rinse it out and make it nice again.

Keeping ducklings

Ducklings are a tad different. They need to have a deep enough water bowl to be able to stick their whole beak in especially when they have access to food. If you watch ducklings you will notice them take some food in their beak and then go over to the water. They submerge their beaks to help them swallow their food + keep it clean and clear.

That is the only difference that I have found. Some will tell you keeping ducklings/ducks is messy but I didn’t find it too difficult. Just about everyday we would have to clean their bin and we would plop them into our tub and let them enjoy a bath. We had ducklings at the wrong time of year - winter. That made it a little bit difficult as we couldn’t just let them roam outside so we used our bathtub instead & it was totally doable. We have so many wonderful memories.

Babies to full grown

Coop building :: So many options out there from building your own, to buying a nice new fancy one. We decided to build our own to keep costs down + make it how we wanted it to be for our chickens.

The ducks do have a fancy one and it was given to us as a gift.

We made our chicken coop so that we can easily block off an area in case we had an injured bird. Which is important! Being prepared is key! Bella, our chicken recently got injured so all we needed to do was nail a cover over a small doorway, and put up some netting to block off her own area inside, and in the fenced in. Everything goes so much smoother when we are prepared like this.

Bedding :: We use Pine shavings, hay, pine needles and grass clippings. Hay gets pretty gross in a coop but the chickens loooove it! I just make sure to clean it more often in the hay spots. My flock that is in there now will only will lay eggs where there is hay. Everywhere else is pine shavings. The plan is to incorporate supplies on hand which are grass clippings and mass amounts of pine needles that are found in our yard.

Ducks and water :: Again ducks need a water source. They spend a lot of time in water. Before we got our pond liner we used a kiddie pool - which is what most people use. Although a hard plastic one is much easier, we used a blow up one that was given to us for the time being.

Feed :: We use Purina Layena crumbles. We also add in oyster shell, cracked corn, seeds + kitchen scraps.

Last tip is to fence everything in. We have our ducks separated from our chickens because our rooster did not want to share the same space with our drake. That’s another story of when our duck got pecked so hard by the rooster -on his beak we didn’t think he would make it. Thank Goodness he did and he fully recovered.

So if you plan to keep chickens + a rooster in with your ducks - definitely spend some time watching them to see if that’s even possible.