Hi Guys, It's Elissa at Moat Cottage Homesteading.
In today's video I thought I would answer some frequently asked questions about Muscovy ducks.
I have many videos on Muscovy ducks, to teach you all about the different things that they do
and how to look after them and all of that sort of stuff, so if you want to see more about Muscovy
ducks then you can check out that playlist, I'll leave the link at the end of this video
and today I'm cleaning out my Muscovy duck sleep area. Most of my Muscovy ducks sleep
in this area at night and a couple of my Chickens as well, although not all,
some sleep in another section and it's up to them where they sleep and which one they sleep in.
I get asked a lot - why I chose Muscovy ducks over other breeds?
Well originally it was by accident but i'm glad it worked out that way because Muscovy ducks
are super quiet and i live in a small town so i have neighbours and they are so quiet
that my neighbors don't really even know that they're there. They're also a very fast growing
bird and they have very lean meat and they're a large bird so they're excellent as meat birds
and i do use the males that we breed are food. They also have beautiful gentle natures,
but i think i would like any breed of duck if i had ducks. I've had geese before,
I would love them all anyway but muscovy ducks definitely have a special place in my heart.
The next question is "do you have to trim their wings?" and the answer is no,
you don't have to trim their wing. If i lived on a thousand acres still, like i did before, i would
not trim their wings. I wouldn't need to because it would be good for them to get away from a fox
because they would be free-ranging and then i would lock them up at night so they would need to
be able to fly a little bit for protection whereas here, where i live now, they're safe in the yard,
it's a contained yard, if their wing is trimmed on one side only, i have videos about that,
then they are safe. If they were to just fly over that fence they're not safe anymore,
there are dogs, there are cats, there are foxes, they are not safe. So i do it for their safety,
it's up to you what you do. In Australia where i live, the muscovy ducks are so fat and healthy
they don't fly like cockatoos or normal birds, they fly like chickens, a little bit of a flap and
they can get over a fence but they're not flying across the country, it's not like that. Maybe
where you live they fly a lot better because i've seen on youtube some of the muscovy ducks in other
countries actually fly quite a good distance, that's not the case with my muscovy ducks,
so every situation is different and i've taught you the way
to trim their wings safely so you're not going to hurt the bird and you need to choose what is best
for the safety and the happiness and health of your bird, that's what's most important.
The ideal age for butchering a Muscovy duck is 14 to 16 weeks, the next question is "can they
fly when they're growing their wing feathers out and they still have blood feathers,
so in between when they're molting?" So this girl is growing her feathers out at the moment,
they're starting to grow through so they're not ready to trim yet because they're full of blood
she technically could fly. This girl, hers have fully grown out now, they're due to be done, so
she can fly over the fence and i haven't trimmed her wings yet. There are a few that i need to do
and in my experience they don't generally tend to fly over the fence when they first grow their
wing feathers back because they've forgotten that they can actually fly, they don't realize
that they can actually fly now that they've got both wings fully grown out again, so you've got
a little bit of leeway but technically yes if they suddenly realized they could fly
they would probably be able to get over the fence with no problems so i do need to do that job.
"What food do i feed my Muscovy ducks?" I have a whole video on that but that is probably my most
asked question when it comes to Muscovy ducks so check out that video if you want to know.
"Can Muscovy ducks get in and out of a kiddie pool?" Well it depends on the size of your kiddie
pool and how high the sides are, it also depends on the size of the Muscovy ducks. I use these
green kiddie pools for my Muscovy ducks and they can get in and out quite easily
however when i have smaller Muscovy ducks, so when i have ducklings i use the small black containers
and i usually put rocks in the bottom, so that they're stable rocks they're not moving around
and the duck can step up onto a rock and then get out if it needs a bit of extra help and when
they're tiny tiny ducklings i have an even smaller container. "How can i stop my muscovy ducks from
being scared of me?" Well as you can see with my muscovy ducks they are fairly quiet and shy birds,
i spend a lot of time with them, i walk around them all the time so they are used to me. When
i'm in a hurry so if i'm walking through the coop area, which is the garden area and i'm busy doing
a job or something and i'm on a mission they can get in my way but i make sure i always have
a calm energy and i'm not shooing them out of the way and i'm not rushing past them, I always
walk slowly around them and i let them know that i'm there if they don't see me. I do have a duck
that has one eye so i always let her know when i'm coming because she would get a bit upset if i
surprised her, so i always talk to her as i'm walking up to her so she knows i'm there
and most of the other ducks they obviously see me coming so i have a calm energy in the coop
area and i don't rush past them because i'm in a hurry doing something else. It's always
about the birds and if you spend a lot of time with them they will get used to you.
The next one isn't actually a question but i do have a response to a comment that i've had a few
times in my comments and it's where a viewer is telling us that they've crossed a muscovy duck
with another breed and that might be a Peking, or a Mallard, or some other type of duck breed
that they've crossed their muscovy ducks with and they're so excited,
they've got this wonderful hybrid and they love them and that is wonderful if that's what you want
but what you need to be aware of is that those ducks will not be fertile,
so that's not sustainable, you will not be able to have babies from those hybrid birds, so if
you're buying birds that are hybrids you need to be aware that they're not going to be fertile.
When i say hybrid i'm talking about a muscovy duck crossed with another breed, because muscovy
ducks aren't actually genetically ducks, they're not related to the Mallard, which all the other
breeds of ducks are. So you can crossbreed the other breeds of ducks that aren't muscovy ducks
and that's fine, they will be fine, but if you're crossing a muscovy duck in there with any other
breed it's not going to work out, I mean you'll get babies but you're not going to have fertile
babies. "How many ducks should i get per square feet?"
or "how many ducks should i get per acre?" Now there are so many variables when it comes to land
as to how many ducks you should be able to have on that land,
there is no straightforward answer with this because land is not equal, you could have an
acre of land that is flat, nothing on it, no grass, no bugs, nothing, just like a desert,
it doesn't even have to be sandy, it can just be dead earth. There's nothing for the ducks to eat.
So you could have an acre and 70 percent of their diet needs to be what they're foraging,
the grasses, the plants, the bugs, the life that's on that land and if you have none,
that acre doesn't mean anything or you can have a smaller area and you can have it full of grasses
and plants and bugs and life and it's alive and there's plenty of shade for the birds in the hot
summers and shelter and all of those things need to be taken into account. So it's not a
straightforward answer in a comment, it's variable depending on the type of land and the amount of
water you've got, the type of housing, security, all of those things you need to take into account
and also the effort you want to put in, if you are cleaning the water yourself, if you've got a
big dam on the property or or how you're watering them and all the different things that need to be
taken into account, so it's not a straightforward answer and you also have to take into account
your local laws and what you're allowed to have. You don't want to overcrowd your birds because
if you have too many birds overcrowding creates issues where birds get picked on, where birds
health is affected and disease and illness can spread and you don't want that, you don't want
to be feeding your birds antibiotics just to keep them alive so you can have more birds,
it's not a good solution. "Why do i put apple cider vinegar in my ducks water?"
now this is their drinking water and i sometimes put it in their pool water too.
Now the reason i do this and i don't do it all the time, the reason i do this is because it helps
maintain the acidity in the crop of the bird and it improves vitamin and mineral absorption,
it also helps to kill bacteria. Now this really helps if you've got a bird that's not feeling
well, so if it looks a little bit off color, which can be hard to tell unless you're really hanging
out with your flock all the time because you may not notice if a bird is not well, ducks are really
good at hiding illness, I also give it to them every couple of months, for a few days in a row,
just so that it gets them into balance. I want my ducks to be balanced and nice and healthy so i do
this every couple of months and if i introduce a new bird, like when i introduced my drake
Mr Smokey Greyson, he got some as well, just to make sure he was 100 percent before he went in
with the rest of the flock. A couple of other things you need to know if you're going to be
using the apple cider vinegar in the ducks water or a chicken water is that you don't want to give
it to them if you're feeding them antibiotics because it will make the antibiotics ineffective
and also don't put it in metal containers stainless steel is fine, plastic is great,
but not other metals because it's an acid and you're adding that to a metal container which
means it can leach the metals out of the metal and put it into the water and the birds can get
heavy metal toxicity and it can poison them. In my video choosing a Muscovy drake for your flock,
i talked about things you need to look out for when you're buying a new drake or getting a new
bird and adding it to the rest of the flock and i talked about choosing a drake or a duck that
doesn't have a smeary behind and the question was "what does a smeary behind mean?" and that
really is just a poopy bum, if they've got feathers that have got poop all around there,
that means they could have diarrhea or they could have other underlying health issues and
when you're choosing a new duck or drake for your flock you don't want one that's got health issues,
so you want to start off at least with a duck or a drake that has a clean bum
if you do have a duck in your flock already, that has a poopy bum all the time, you can start it on
the apple cider vinegar in their water or if you've tried that and it doesn't work or your
bird looks like it's got flat feathers they're not shiny at all and they're not waterproof
then get it checked out by a vet. There are a lot of illnesses that waterfowl can get, i don't
even know all of them because there's different illnesses in different parts of the world that
the ducks can get and it's important to get onto anything straight away, as soon as you can so that
it doesn't spread to the rest of the birds because you could you could actually lose your whole flock
if something came through it, so it's important to remember 'spend time with your flock and enjoy
their company and really get to know them' it's not just so that they get used to you, it's so you
can see all the differences in their personalities and their the way they behave normally so that
if they are a little bit off color, you will be able to tell. You will know their personality and
think hey they're just sitting around a bit much today they haven't done much and you will know.
i know some of you are here because you spend time with wild muscovy ducks,
so you don't actually have muscovy ducks yourself in your backyard but you do spend
time with wild muscovy ducks and you care for them by watching them and spending time
with them and i just like to say thank you for caring for all the Muscovy ducks around the world
and if you want to feed the Muscovy ducks in the wild remember they like greens like rocket,
silverbeet, spinach, lettuce, but don't feed them bread. They're settling in for
the night and they should be nice and warm and cozy on this cold, late autumn night
check out my other videos so you can learn more about Muscovy ducks in
more detail on particular topics. Thanks for watching, I'll see you in the next video you