Keeping a few domestic ducks in the garden is a growing trend and having kept them myself for a few years, I can understand why people are drawn to keeping a few of these webbed wonders. Nine out of ten people who start keeping ducks started with chickens first.

I frequently get asked questions about keeping ducks from experienced chicken keepers, there seems to be a common belief that ducks are more difficult to keep than chickens and that you need a pond or small lake to be able to keep them which will soon turn into a mud bath. When I started keeping ducks, I also had many of these preconceptions most of which turned out to be wrong.

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Ducks should be wormed, just like other poultry. Worming ducks is not difficult using a suitable product and usually simply involves mixing in a given quantity with their normal food ration.

Many health problems can be avoided by worming twice a year. This is usually done after they have stopped breeding and again before they start laying, i.e. over the winter months since ducks will naturally find more earthworms during the wetter months and it is the earthworms that are the intermediate hosts, carrying the worm eggs.

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Summer 2006 and our 23 geese and 4 chickens are vaccinated....at last. It could have been done sooner, but we wanted the goslings to be vaccinated as well.

We were told that according to the European Union we had to wait until 1st July, when our goslings were old enough. They had to be seven weeks of age before they were allowed to be vaccinated.

As things were so insecure, due to the AI threat, we thought it would be better not to breed this year. We were sorry to disappoint a family who had ordered two geese the previous year. When another family called looking for two geese, vaccinated, we decided to breed a few goslings.

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White Patches on Ducks with Extended Black Genes - Pure Black, Chocolate or Blue coloured ducks will start off as the correct colour during their first year of life however, they will normally get white patches of down starting to appear that gradually get worse as they age.

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Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm is located in Alberta Canada. During the winter, the temperature can drop as low as -45C. Specialist care is of course required and Tara tells us how she looks after her bantam ducks in these extremely cold conditions.

This article is about what works for us in keeping our bantam ducks comfy and happy. Let's face it, we've been smitten by Call Ducks and Indies; bantam breeds as opposed to standard sized ducks. One may keep about five Calls / Indies to one Rouen or Khaki Campbell or Runner duck in regards to facility size, feed amount, etc. We are not particularly fond of duck eggs, so egg production for consumption is not relevant to our situation. Ducks who produce lots of eggs must eat more food to manufacture these eggs. Our bantam ducks produce quite a lot of eggs as it is!

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