happyduckygal
Chirping
Who here owns Muscovy ducks? I’ve been raising Muscovys for 3-4 years now and have owned anywhere from 25-35 at a time. We’ve had to move twice in the past year and our flock has changed a lot. The house we initially lived at had what I felt like was a medium/large fenced in back yard out in the country, didn’t have to worry about neighbors. The ducks were free range and they’d stay around the house, never really flew long distances until after a couple different clutches of eggs hatched and they grew older, they would all fly across the road to a pond behind the neighbors house and then fly back to eat and sleep. Then we moved to a house that had its own pond in the back yard, we had no fenced in yard and we had more neighbors. The ducks were still free range. At this house they started roaming more and more and eventually started getting into our neighbors things but nobody ever complained . We weren’t at this house long before we moved to the house we’re currently at. To this house we only brought three ducks with us, they were my original ducks and the most friendly/human interactive, we left the rest at the pond of the previous house which was family owned. The house we live at now has a creek a couple hundred feet from the house but there is a lot of grown up brush and trees between the creek and house. The three ducks are still free range and like to fly to the creek but they have now started flying across to the neighbors yards and getting into stuff over there. I would like them to still be able to fly to the creek and since they are free range I don’t wanna clip wings and they not able to get away from predators. I hate to lock them up but these neighbors have already come to us once about them. If I did lock them up I’d still want them to be able to swim someway but I’ve had terrible luck in the past with managing kiddie pools and small man made pond. Anybody have any ideas on what I should do? Do you let your ducks free range? If not what kind of duck pens do you guys have? And how do you maintain your pools or ponds? Also I’d love new ideas of ways to keep them busy like cool snacks/objects to peck at....
