First of all, before I go
off into my typical poultry geekiness, those of you who don’t read our
other blog will probably want to check out cute duckling photos here and here.  Be warned, though: those posts are going to make you want ducks!

Okay, back to the real topic at hand — duckweed!  A throwaway line in Storey’s Guide to Raising Ducks mentioned that, in the wild, duckweed would be a duckling’s first food.  I was a bit dubious since I’d read that the plant makes good chicken feed, but once I tried it out, our hens turned up their noses at the greenery. 
However this time around, book learning was on the right track — when
I offered duckweed to our ducklings, they went nutty for the wild food.

Later, after I let the youngsters into a little pond, they quickly
consumed every speck of duckweed off the surface (while also going after
water bugs, I assume, to round out their diet).  I now see why
ducks are a permaculture poster child — our ducklings happily spent
entire days in the pond foraging, only eating storebought food in their
brooder once I shut them in for the night.

Of course, every
permaculture opportunity has to be carefully managed.  By their
third day in the pond, our ducklings were spending more time resting on
the bank because the pond food was pretty much gone.  Luckily,
there was enough duckweed off in one corner to allow me to do what I
should have done from the beginning — start another pond going to
allow for aquatic pasture rotation.

We had a little kiddie pool in the barn that we’d once used to soak
mushroom logs, so I filled the pool up with water and seeded it with
some duckweed, snails, and a quart of pond water (for microscopic
life).  Hopefully in a couple of weeks, there will be enough bounty
in the kiddie pool to give the ducklings a few foraging days (and to
give their current pond a rest).

We don’t have the
infrastructure in place right now, but I could see having at least four
small ponds for a handful of ducks, moving their home every week to give
them new aquatic grazing ground.  Ducks definitely seem like
they’re going to be keepers on our farm, so I suspect we’ll expand our
water features in the future — good thing we live in soggy ground!

As soon as we opened our box of
26 Cornish Cross chicks and 10 Ancona ducklings, I knew the two species
were entirely different birds.  They were all a bit stressed from
their journey through the postal system, but the ducklings were largely
silent while the chicks peeped loudly.  The ducklings were also
about twice as big as the chicks, despite being the same age, so their
larger body size probably made it easier for them to handle the long
ride.  (As a side note, the size difference also meant I had to put one of the Ecoglow brooders at the second notch from day one.)

My next observation came when I put in their waterers.  As
recommended by various sources, I let the ducklings drink their fill and
take a little nap before offering food, while I gave the
chicks access to both food and water at once.  But both went
straight to the water (an Avian Aqua Miser Original for the chicks and
an open waterer for the ducklings).  The ducklings jumped right
into the waterer and made a huge mess, but didn’t seem to mind getting
wet, while chicks who got dribbled on from the watering frenzy at the
much drier nipple waterer ran off to get rid of moisture under the brooder
right away.  Obvious but true — ducks like to be wet and chicks
like to be dry.  (You can read more about my solution to the duck watering dilemma in this post.)


Less
obvious was the way the ducklings immediately started acting
like a flock, while the chicks each did their own thing.  For the
first day, I kept them in separate bins in the house, and the ducklings
were all doing the same thing every time I looked — either all napping
or all eating and drinking.  The chicks were generally spread out,
with some at each station at all times.  Later, when I let them
outside, the distinction was even more obvious since the ducks all came
tumbling out in one mass and explored their new world together. 
The chicks, in contrast, weren’t quite as ready to leave the brooder,
and many ended up just staying inside.


For my next observation, I pulled a handful of chickweed out of the
garden and put a dollop in each bin.  One chick came over to take a
look, then wandered disinterestedly back to the feeding trough, but the ducks
immediately began gobbling down the greenery like it was just what
they’d been looking for.  Later, after I put both sets of
youngsters in the outdoor brooder and let them go outside, the ducks
still seemed to be better foragers, although the difference wasn’t as
extreme.  (Granted, this isn’t a very fair comparison since I see
large differences in foraging abilities of chickens by breed, and Cornish Cross
are supposed to be the worst in this department.)



Watching chicks and
ducklings is my favorite leisure-time activity at the moment, so stay
tuned for more observations in later posts!