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Thinking about lend a laying mint to your backyard , but having problem settle between duck and chickens ? Agonize no more .
Ducks are easy to crowd , have workaday nut laying hours , and are superior to chicken in terms of blighter control . Chickens are more readily available , usually sleazy to purchase , and are a better confinement animal , which is an significant divisor if space is an takings . Now , are you team duck or squad chicken ?
The following is an excerpt fromThe Resilient Gardenerby Carol Deppe . It has been adapted for the entanglement .
The most ecologically well - adapted livestock for the maritime Northwest is the duck’s egg . The best - lay duck breeds set better than the best - laying chicken breeds . Ducks can free - range yr - round in our region . Ducks forage much more of their diets than chickens and deplete a larger variety of natural solid food common here . duck’s egg feed escargot and slugs , and are in force for yard and garden pest control . Ducks enjoy our weather . ( I should perhaps bring up my biases . I ’ve preserve five breeds of chicken , two breeds of goose , and seven breeds of duck . The ducks are my favorites , especially Ancona ducks , and at this item , I keep only a flock of thirty - two Ancona ducks . But I like chickens too . )
Eggs
Many mass who are allergic to chicken eggs can eat duck’s egg egg . A few multitude are allergic to both . I have also scarper into occasional people who lay claim to have problems eating duck’s egg egg who can eat poulet eggs , though this design seems to be rarefied . duck from the well - laying stock and strain can lie well enough to earn their keep for old age . Laying poulet are ordinarily not create economically beyond the 2nd year .
duck are much easy to ensure than chickens . duck of put strain can be easily confined with a fence only 2 feet high(as long as they have food and body of water and their chum with them ) . Most of the egg breed of chickens can take flight well enough to get over any fencing . Keeping them out of the garden or the eaves of the porch often requires wing - clipping every dame .
duck tend to place bollock that are bigger than chicken eggs from a breed of tantamount sizing . Some two-fold - aim duck’s egg breeds ( such as Anconas ) lie egg that are very big for the size of it of the raspberry .
Ducks commonly lie their eggs between 4:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m. daily . This means they lay their egg in the nest in their night pen instead of enshroud a nest in the yard . you’re able to pick up the duck’s egg eggs just once per day , at the same time that you let the duck’s egg out to scrounge . Chickens have a twenty - six - hour laying cycle , meaning each hen place a little later each day . So a flock of chickens is laying at all time of the twenty-four hour period and night . When permit to free - range , they sometimes add up back to lay in their nest and sometimes do n’t . So recovering all the eggs can be tough .
Pest Control
Chickens can help with pestilence control in yards , gardens , and eatage under certain fate . But chickens do n’t eat big slugs or snails , two of the most authoritative garden pestilence in the Northwest . ( Some chickens may eat pocket-size punch or snails . ) And the scraping of poulet tears up plantings and scatters manure and dirt over the eternal rest . Ducks are considered the prime minister critter for pest control . All the laying breeds of duck are big enough to eat even 8 - column inch banana tree bullet , and do so with enthusiasm , swallowing them the room a blade swallower does a sword .
Moving Your Ducks and Chickens Around
Ducks are easy to herd . you’re able to utilize one or two herd staffs , or you’re able to just walk behind the duck with your script extended sideways , making scooping motions in the way you require the duck to go and say , “ Let ’s go , duck . ”
In Asia , the free - range egg industry is based upon duck that are kept in unafraid lasting quarters at nighttime and herded to various separate foraging areas during the day . Sincechickens ca n’t be herd , the dark penitentiary or sign of the zodiac usually needs to be in or conterminous to the foraging orbit . To rotate chicken foraging , you move their house , which must be portable . To rotate duck’s egg forage , you just crowd the duck to a different spot during the day , leaving their lasting playpen in its permanent place .
The vaporing of cock is much garish than any noise duck’s egg make . Neighbors are less probable to hear or object to the audio of ducks .
Climate Considerations
In many sphere costless - range crybaby egg are only seasonal , butfree - range duck eggs are twelvemonth - rotund . Here in the nautical Northwest , the free - range duck is happy forage outdoors the entire yr , and ducks of appropriate breeds are good winter bed . Ducks delight in cold rain . poulet are so scummy in moth-eaten rain and use so much energy keep warm that they either do n’t lay or their egg output is n’t scotch . The duck’s egg is the only direction to get economical , year - circular , spare - range egg output in the maritime Northwest and other areas with cold , wet winters.(In areas where the ground is frozen much of the winter , there is no style to get wintertime free - range egg product from any poultry . )
Diet
Ducks can forage a great part of their diet than chickens . poulet feed mostly grain and animal life , with greenery as a salad . duck eat texture and animal biography but also considerably more greenery than chicken , including dope , as long as it is succulent and rise .
In improver , duck can make excellent use of wetlands , waterways , lakes , and ponds .
duck are more resistant to disease than chickens . Ducklings are hardier than chicks . Ducklings are more heavily feather and have a layer of subcutaneous fat . They are designed for moth-eaten , lactating weather . Ducklings can be outdoors to begin with in give than skirt . If let to waterproof themselves properly , duckling can be out foraging in their third week . Chicks are unremarkably kept indoors the first six to eight hebdomad .
Ducks , however , are much more vulnerable to four - footed predators than chickens , peculiarly chickens with inviolate wing . Some hoi polloi with marginal fencing material or night housing can keep chickens but not ducks .
Chickens are much more readily available and unremarkably punk . Day - older wench of many breeds are often sold sexed , so you may get incisively as many of each sexual practice as you require . Most laying stock of ducks are much less useable and are usually sold as uncoiled - run only , have in mind you do n’t have a go at it how many of what sex you ’re get .
Water
Ducks need washup body of water . Chickens keep their skin and plumage condition via dust bathe . Some people recover it much well-situated to provide a wry dust bath than a bathing syndicate . Books sometimes say ducks can be raised without bathing pee . Although this is technically true , raising duck that agency is n’t kind . duck keep their skin and feathers in consideration by bathing in water and preening and coat their feathers with wax . All you demand for a smattering of duck is a kiddy pool of water change a duad of time a week . My ducks have a minuscule pond I made by propping up a piece of pond liner on the hillside so I can open one side and drain it and hose it down easily . If you are unwilling to provide washup water for ducks , I suggest you get chickens .
Chickens are a much better confinement animal than duck . Ducks drink far more H2O , have a much looser , more liquidy poop , and need more blank space when limit than chickens . Some people need to confine their poultry and make for the garden produce and food to the birds . Chickens are unremarkably the well pick for that situation .
In area where wintertime is harsh and the ground is freeze or covered with snow for months , any poultry has to be confine . This fact can translate into chickens being the most workable alternative . If I hold out in Minnesota or Wisconsin , or upstate New York , I retrieve I would keep chickens rather of ducks .
Don’t Put Ducks in a “Chicken Tractor”
The “ volaille tractor ” is a little portable house with no floor that is moved around to fresh ground every day or so . There are many Christian Bible and articles about this dash of poultry guardianship . It is in reality a confinement situation in which the birds get a little greenery but not actually very much beast cloth . It works good for commercial broiler chickens , which do n’t forage very actively or move far from the self-feeder anyway .
Laying hens in chicken tractor grow eggs that are more a commercial-grade - dieting - ground egg than a spare - range one . However , crybaby tractor are the only choice many mass have for their put down flock , and the wimp tractor , managed optimally , produces eggs that are better taste , belike more nutritious , and for sure more ethical than those from commercial caged layers .
wimp tractor work best with chickens . You ca n’t just step in duck’s egg . Laying volaille roost on raised perch at night and will use nests stacked in a bank against the wall . So the chickens use three dimension of the space in a small-scale movable home . The “ poulet tractor ” usually has one wall of nest that can be accessed from the side without entering the pen and a build - in roost on one side or end . A volaille tractor for duck is problematic .
Ducks apply only level space , and so need much more storey space than chickens , even before taking into report that their manure is much wetter . They call for supererogatory level space for nests and reside . They involve much more water and bigger water containers and washup water . By the time you have given the duck a large enough penitentiary to be comfortable for them , it wo n’t be able to hold many birds in it , and it will not be very portable .
In America and Europe , wimp eggs are the monetary standard . Most mass do n’t know how to cook duck egg . During the last two 10 , I ’ve developed cooking method acting and recipes for an American style of duck’s egg egg cookery . If you sell duck testis , you will need to do somecustomer educationon how they should be cooked .
Many people will enjoy trying both chicken and ducks . Generally , the two specie should not be brooded together or housed in the same dark quarter ( unless they ’re in separate pens).They have different necessary . However , Gallus gallus and ducks can normally portion out their daytime forage surface area .
Recommended Reads
The Importance of Nutrient Cycling
A Cluckin ’ Good Time : Why Chickens dominate the Roost
The Resilient Gardener
Food Production and Self - Reliance in Uncertain Times
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