Why Ducks? Our 1st Homestead Animal

Chickens first right? That’s what everyone does! Not so fast guys!

(a duckling the day we brought it home)

I’ve probably spent the last 3 years researching homesteading. I have spent time looking at what animals would be best for us to have, what breeds would best suit our needs, how to build their living quarters and what to feed them. Countless hours have been spent in this manner. I then share the info I’ve found with my husband and we make a decision. Well, originally we came to the same conclusion, chickens first!

When we moved to our property I thought we had it all figured out. We would get chickens and have a large garden. That’s it! Nothing fancy. We had a pretty limited idea of what our small property could do for us. However, over the past few months I have been trying to discover other homestead channels to get an idea of how other people homestead. There are about a million and one different ways to do things on a homestead and I wanted to make sure we weren’t limiting our perspective on our property. dirtpatchheaven was just one of the many homesteads I started watching on youtube. Their family has an extremely diversified homestead which includes ducks! On one of her videos she mentioned that ducks are very fatty and that she collects the fact to use in cooking. Just with that one statement I was sold. I knew we would not be able to have a pig on our property so finding a way to get cooking fat was important to me. Let’s just say the lard you can buy in the store probably isn’t good for you…..

So I sat down and started doing some research. Common theme right? I love my research! So why did we choose to get ducks first?

What Sets Them Apart

Most of the time you see chickens pecking at the dirt getting bugs that live in the ground. This is great for pest control especially if you let them in your garden space in the winter, but what about the flying bugs? Guys in south GA there are flying bugs galore. It’s horrible. There are these biting flies, they look like house flies (except they’re yellow) and do NOT make a single sound. Before you know it you’ve been bit and let me tell you those things are ITCHY. Much more than mosquito bites. Ducks love to go after flying bugs. Living in an area that has a TON of mosquitoes, biting flies etc this is a HUGE advantage to ducks.

It’s also wet here. No, it’s not wet all year long, it’s nothing like Washington State. But our first spring here was CONSTANTLY wet. We had puddles in our yard the whole season. This year it has been the entire month of June. Ducks don’t mind the water, chickens do. I have heard from a lot of homesteaders that their chickens will stay in their coop all day when it’s raining. Our ducks haven’t once stayed under cover while it’s raining!

Ducks don’t scratch the ground! I have heard some people having issues with chickens because they scratch at everything…. Ducks are a little less destructive. I’m sure they will still eat your whole garden though! They also don’t require dust boxes!
Finally, they are just a bit hardier. Ducklings are more temperature resilient. Meaning you will probably lose less ducklings than you will chicks. We got 6 ducklings who were about a week old and didn’t lose a single one! For new homesteaders (who love animals) this is a big selling point. Imagine how devastating it would have been to lose some of your very first homestead animals. Yes, it will probably be devastating the first time no matter what but at least the first set of animals made it and we can feel more confident in our homesteading ventures moving forward.

Duck Egg vs Chicken Egg

You may be surprised to find out that all eggs are not created equal. In fact the duck egg contains more omega 3s, Vitamin D, and Choline. They are also larger than chicken eggs and contain more calories, cholesterol and fat. Guys, there is nothing wrong with calories (as long as they aren’t empty) or fat (as long as it isn’t saturated fats) And because eggs contain unsaturated fats they actually help lower your risk of heart disease!

Muscovy Ducks

Our ducks are quiet! That’s right, no quacking. This is important because we have 1 neighbor and only live on 1 acre. Yes, we plan to get chickens and even have a rooster. But the less of an impact we can make on our neighbor, the less annoying we will be and hopefully the less issues we will have. Now technically our breed of duck isn’t even a duck! I didn’t tell my husband this until after we already had them and it blew his mind for days!! All breeds of duck are descendant from the mallard duck. The Muscovy is actually a different kind of waterfowl (Cairina moschata) native to the tropics. (Don’t try to breed them with other ducks, you’ll end up with a mule!) For the sake of ease they are just referred to as ducks.

Why is this important? In addition to not quacking, they eat grass! No other duck does this (f.y.i. geese do) so you can have some help mowing your lawn! They also lay larger clutches! A Muscovy hen can lay and hatch up to 16 eggs! That’s a lot of future meat, especially considering the male Muscovy can reach 16lbs with females reaching half that weight at maturity.

Muscovy ducks do not require a body of water. However they love having one and ours have a mini kiddie pool to swim in!

There are a few drawbacks to Muscovy ducks. They have CLAWS! Yes they are slightly more dangerous? If you want to call it that. They use these claws to perch, the females in particular like to perch!

I cannot comment on the taste of duck eggs as I’ve never had one or the taste of the meat (never had that either). Don’t worry if we hate duck we’ll just feed it to our pets! I have read that some people compare Muscovy meat specifically to veal. Who knows!? Maybe we will do a reaction video when we have our first egg and our first duck :D

How We Got Our Ducks

All these factors went into why we considered ducks for our homestead and they are all good reasons. However, while we planned on getting ducks at some point we still never planned to get them first! It all came down to a great opportunity. We had already chosen Muscovy ducks but were actually planning to get meat rabbits first, until there was someone in our area giving away Muscovy ducks for FREE! Their ducks had been left to their own devices and had reproduced too much and wanted to downsize. We jumped on it! We got 6 one week old ducklings from them and the adventure began! The owners did not know how to sex ducklings so we don’t know what we have yet but we plan on keeping all the hens and probably one drake. About a month after we got these ducklings someone was selling some 2-3month old Muscovies. We knew we wanted to get a male (drake) that was unrelated to the ducklings we have so we paid $20 for a drake and a beautiful female as well. From what I’ve read it isn’t that important to worry about the genetics of your poultry flock, however I feel better with some diversity so this is something you will probably see us do frequently. If you decide to do this as well make sur you keep track of who you buy from!

(our ducklings now at about 5-6 weeks with our older additions)

This is just a documentation of our journey and the thought process (or lack thereof) that goes into our decisions! I cannot say whether ducks would be the best fit for your homestead. But I have to say we’re liking ours so far and I think they will be a permanent fixture on our homestead!

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