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For Easter this year my family got a pair of ducks. Let me tell you it has been quite an adventure. My kids love them, my husband funny enough loves them (he tells me quite often that he never thought he would own ducks). I love them! I wanted to document our journey raising these two funny birds because even through all of the research that we did prior to getting them, we didn’t know everything that we do now and some of it I wish I did know before!

We officially brought our ducklings home on Friday, April 7th. They were supposed to be given to our kids on Easter but I failed and couldn’t wait! They were so cute and lets be honest, when you don’t have pets in the house and your kids hear peeps constantly it is really hard to keep them a secret for two more days. My husband brought them home and we all immediately fell in love. We ended up getting two different breeds. One is an American Pectin. She is your typical white duck with yellow bill and feet but as a duckling they are the cute yellow rubber ducky look. She belongs to my oldest who gave her the fitting name Lemon. The second was a Blue Swedish duck. She was an escape artist that wanted to explore everything! She belongs to my youngest who has the perfect matching personality. At first he named her Ghosty, but lets be honest, I had a really hard time sticking to that name. It’s a typical five year old made up name and to me, it just didn’t fit so I made the effort to at least call her Ghost (cringe).

A few things that we learned during our first week taking care of them!

• They are messy! After about 3 days we figured out their routine which included poop, eat, play, cuddle and repeat. They poop about every 15-20 minutes too. They need water in order to eat. Think of it like eating a few crackers and having to drink something to wash it down. Due to this, their food mixes with their water and their water gets mixed in with their food. It is quite lovely. So keep a constant fresh supply of both.
• Fresh supply of food and water! I had to refill or clean out their water or food dish about twice a day. Their food was Purina’s Flock Raiser Crumbles that we got from IFA. With their water we bought a Chick Boost Probiotics. We took an empty gallon of milk, cleaned it out and filled that up with the probiotic mix so it was easier to measure out and pour. We learned that ducklings need about 10mg of niacin today. This is like Vitamin B3 which helps the ducklings convert the fats, carbs, and proteins into useable energy.
• Clean place to stay! Amazon was having a sale on their storage bins so we got this one. Here’s my link to Amazon for the bins. https://amzn.to/43OeGYo . We had one of these totes at home already so we got another one to alternate when it came to cleaning them out. The bedding that we would lay in the bottom of the tote was Flock Fresh Bedding from IFA (I pretty much live at IFA now. It’s my version of Target haha). https://ifacountrystores.com/products/urban-farming/backyard-animals/coops-hutches-fencing/flock-fresh-bedding/ . We changed their bedding morning and night. As I said before they are messy so water mixed with hay and food and poop it’s just best to keep up on it!
• Duckling cuddles! Since babies are always so cute, everyone is obsessed and wants to cuddle them. We started to learn that they love their cuddles and love to be warm. Lemon would always cuddle in my oldest lap, chest or arm pit areas. When she finally got comfortable she would pass out hard! Ghosty was more curious and wanted to look around and climb on my youngest to get the best view of who knows what. She would eventually find a good spot to sleep though. But my boys definitely loved the snuggle time as much as the ducks did that is for sure. Easter morning my husband and I woke up to a quiet house. That was unusual because my kids for sure are like most who wake up on a holiday morning begging for us to get up so they could open their gifts or toys etc. This year not us. We walked out and our kiddos were watching a movie cuddling with their napping ducky’s. It took me a good 30 minutes to coax them to putting the ducks down to go and find their Easter baskets. I guess you could say pets for the win!

Each week I will be writing about our experiences, and reflections on things we learned and how much our ducks grew! So check back!

Here are our girls! They are so fun to watch I find myself watching them then doing the other things that I need to! Enjoy!

We are not professionals when it comes to raising ducks. This is just a journal of our experiences and things that we have seen and gone through with ours. You can use our ideas but please do your own research and studying if you are thinking about getting your own.