What I Learned In My First Year of Brooding Ducklings

Raising ducklings is messy business, and unlike chicks, is not forgiving and not easy. I learned a lot in my first year of brooding ducklings, and I want to pass that knowledge on to anyone who is just starting out in their journey of raising ducklings. I will be brutally honest here, I did some things wrong and made some mistakes that didn't end well for the ducklings I was taking care of, in particular when it came to predator control and cleaning. Luckily, I learned from those mistakes and I can continue to grow and do better. Hopefully my mistakes can help you learn without having to go through the consequences of losing duckilngs.

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Our brooder system was a struggle. We started out using a variety of things such as cardboard boxes, totes. We also started with keeping them in our library, but they were so messy and my husband couldn't handle the smell, so we had to get them out of there! We ended up building a new brooder that was enabled with smart sensors and heat lamps so that we could take better care of our ducklings. Even after building the brooder, we went through several different bedding options (such as pine shavings, vinyl, puppy pads before finding one that worked (rubber horse stall mat with 2+ inches of pine shavings).

Heat was easy enough to figure out, ducklings aren't as sensitive to changes in heat as chicks are. We ended up keeping our ducklings in the hatcher for the first day and a half, moving them to a 20 gallon fish tank with a Brinsea brooder plate for an additional day, and then moving them to the brooder that we built with heat lamps. We keep the heat lamps at 95 degrees for the first week, then reduce by 5-7 degrees per week until room temperature.

Security of the brooder was difficult to obtain with cats and neighbor's dogs. Our cat was a threat on the inside, and our neighbor's dog ended up killing one of our cats, several of our chickens and constantly annoyed the ducks. Since Texas is a fence-out state, we had to do our part to make sure the neighbor's dogs had reduced access to our property.

We started out by using non-medicated feed. Ducklings can in fact have medicated feed without any adverse effects, and after losing several ducklings to coccidiosis at one point, and not losing any after introducing medicated feed, we now recommend it until ducklings can transition to adult pellets. 

We highly recommend Nutrena Country Feeds Duck Feed as the main feed for your ducks as soon as they are old enough to consume pellets (approximately 4-6 weeks old). We tried Purina Duck Feed, and our adult ducks quit laying and younger ducks developed angel wing until we switched, likely because of the slightly higher protein content.

Another thing we learned was that access to water 24/7 is required for ducklings to thrive. Ducklings require water to digest their food, and if they go without water for too long then they will become dehydrated and also possibly choke on their food. We learned the hard way that when left without water for even a short amount of time, when given water again, ducklings will gorge themselves to the point where it can cause toxicity, rupture of internal organs, or seizures. 

If you let your ducklings run out of water, give them water in very small quantities every 15 minutes until they are no longer gorging themselves, then refill their water completely and try not to let them run out again. Water should always be given in a shallow dish with a wide berth around the water source between the edges of the brooder. 

Duckling mess can turn into toxic conditions really quickly. Frequent cleaning of the pine shavings is necessary. The deep litter method in particular should not be used in a duckling brooder. 

If needed, after cleaning out the brooder, you can use a sprayer with white vinegar as a natural disinfectant on your brooder and anything your brooder touches. Watch for mold, flies, mites, or anything indicative of a nasty brooder and clean it out immediately when you see those signs, and you will have happy, thriving ducklings. I recommend spot-cleaning the brooder daily and doing a bigger clean out at least once every two weeks.

Ducklings can start swimming early on, but you need to watch them and it can only be for a few minutes at a time. Ducklings need to be dried off immediately when they begin swimming. Honestly, there is no need to provide them access to water to swim in.

Do not allow ducklings to swim in cold water or outside on cold days. There was one day that we had what I thought was exceptionally nice weather. I went to fill up the tub that I let our 4 week old ducklings consistently take a bath in, put them in it, my husband called me away for literally a minute and I came back to two ducklings dead and the rest in shock. This was a horrible experience and it was all my fault, for not supervising the ducklings and also for putting them in water when it was too cold outside for their young bodies to handle.

Don't allow access to swimmable water if you aren't there to supervise.

The things we dealt with most were dehydration (from spilling water bowls), coccidosis.

I don't consider myself an expert on duckling illness, so I'll point you to the experts instead. Read the below sources and get familiar with signs of the sicknesses you could encounter with ducklings, and how to treat them. 

Wry Neck - Fresh Eggs Daily

Pasty Butt - MyPetChicken

Splay/Spraddle Leg or Slipped Tendon - PoultryPedia

Niacin Deficiency - Home in the Finger Lakes

Overheating/Heat Stress - Duck DVM

Becoming Chilled - Farmhouse Guide

I recommend having the following on hand in your "duckling medicine box":

• Rooster Booster Poultry Cell supplement
• Towels or rags
• Cotton balls
• VetRap
• Smallest possible syringe for giving liquid/drenching
• Corn starch or blood coagulator

Ducks have requirements for niacin that can be achieved in many ways. We found that the best way for us to meet this requirement was by adding vitamins to their feed and water in the form of Rooster Booster crumbles and Poultry Cell, both of which are available on Chewy and from Tractor Supply or Atwoods.

Peas were a fun snack but most of the time, ducklings struggled to eat peas and wouldn't touch them if they were mushed. Brewer's yeast was hard to get ahold of.

When it came time to transition to the flock, we were very excited. At first we fenced off a small part of our duck run to put the little ones in to interact with the adult ducks through the fence. Unfortunately, snakes got the entirety of our first batch of ducklings. Then, we tried keeping our ducklings in a dog crate during the night for safety and in their run during the day, but snakes still managed to squeeze into the tiny holes. 

Then, we built a small duckling tractor/coop out of hardware cloth and 1x2's, and it was great! We continued to get snakes in our duck coop that tried their hardest to get to the babies, but they were unsuccessful. We also ended up getting White Chinese Geese to protect our ducklings from snakes, and that was a great decision. Once the ducklings were big enough to hold their own against the adult ducks, and it had been a few weeks where the adult ducks could see the babies through the tractor fence, we went ahead and added them to the flock.