Raising Ducks for Meat & Eggs on the Homestead

Here’s all the information you need on raising ducks for beginners, including raising them for meat and eggs. We share popular breeds for meat and eggs, as well as housing and fencing options, whether you need a pond, and other practical tips and troubleshooting. Ducks serve multiple functions on the homestead, including pest control. It’s not a question of ducks vs. chickens – both are great! However, ducks are hardy, healthy, and happy animals to add to your land.

Have you considered raising ducks for meat and eggs on the homestead?

Ducks are delightful birds and can be a great addition to any homestead, weather urban or rural. However, there are some things to consider before you make the leap into raising ducks.

Included in today’s article are answers to the most common questions for beginners about bringing ducks onto the homestead. We’ve also tried to include all the things we’ve learned about them over the years – the good, the bad, and the poopy!

Other Homestead Livestock Articles for Later:

Small Livestock for Small Homesteads

3 Best Places to Find Poultry for Sale

Why Ducks May Not Be Right For You

If you’re looking for a pet that isn’t high maintenance, let me just say right off that ducks aren’t that pet. If for no other reason than that they’re loud and they seemingly poop their weight every day.

To be fair, geese are a thousand times worse in those respects, but ducks aren’t the most cuddly or domestic “pet” you could choose.

However, if you are thinking about raising ducks for sustainable meat and eggs on your homestead, then I encourage you to give ducks a long look. They’re not the easiest homestead livestock to raise but they have a lot of assets to bring to your family and your land.

Raising Ducks for Beginners

If you’re completely new to ducks, here are a few introductory topics that are important to be prepared for before you begin.

Housing & Fencing
Temperature Considerations
Food & Water
Pond Requirements

There’s a lot more to know, of course, but this is a good place to begin as you get consider raising ducks.

Duck Housing & Fencing

You will need duck housing of some kind. If you’ve kept chickens before then you’ll be familiar with the fact that birds are wonderfully insulated against cold from their feathers. However, they don’t do well with drafts that get up under those feathers, so a draft-free winter house is recommended.

In the summer, they’ll need a place of regress from direct sun if your temperatures are high. Like all birds, ducks don’t sweat, so they require shade and air movement, coupled with a constant water supply to stay cool in the heat.

Be sure to provide a roof to whatever structure you use, as well as sturdy walls to deter predators who are just looking for a tasty duck dinner.

Housing Examples

You can use moveable ducks coops with great success. Tyrant Farms shares how to build a quality moveable duck pen/coop, including how to make it work for a mixed flock of males (drakes) and females (hens).
You can also choose to range your ducks, having them return to a stationary house each night. Be sure to use fencing that will keep the ducks where you want them and protected from predators during the day. Hip Chicks Digs shares their version of a stationary duck coop and run.

We’ve raised ducks in both sheds and coops and as long as the drafts are mitigated both work well.

We’ve used chain link fence panels as well as field fence to keep our ducks contained. With either set up of fencing, we’ve always rotated their pasture area.

Ducks are amazing foragers and will happily eat bugs out of your pasture and grass, as well as keep your pasture and grass clipped down. They don’t eat everything; they’re finnicky about some weeds, especially if they have tough stems.

However, if you keep them in any one area for too long, they’ll make a mucky, muddy mess of that area. Keep them moving!

Backyard Chicken Project can help you answer the common question of whether you can keep ducks and chickens together.

Duck Food & Water

Ducks are natural omnivores, meaning they eat both plants and animals. Some of their favorite wild foraged foods are snails, worms, insects, and even small frogs or fish.

Bill Mollison, one of the fathers of permaculture once quipped that in our gardens,

We don’t have a slug problem, we have a duck deficiency!

Using natural solutions for homestead problems is at the heart of permaculture design and livestock play a special role in that. Ducks can be used to keep your grass and pasture aerated and your slug populations down.

You can also supplement their feed with grain rations that can be found in every livestock feed store. You will also need to supply them with grit or course sand as part of their digestive system if you don’t have enough in your native soil.

Wild ducks will often forage seeds and grains, especially in the fall and winter when greens and proteins are harder to find.

Domestic ducks on our homesteads are often pampered with quality feed and forage. Ducks aren’t quite as inclined to eat table scraps like chickens, but they do enjoy bits of extra fruits and veggies.

Ducks will need a constant source of water to drink.

They also use water to soften and otherwise masticate their food since they don’t have teeth. Like chickens, they do have a gizzard which is a special part of their digestive systems that grinds their food.
Ducks also use water to clean their bills, especially their nasal holes, which keeps them breathing easily.
Obviously as water fowl, ducks also love to play and swim in water. Though you don’t need a full-sized pond to keep them happy! You can use a stock tank, kiddie pool, or any other large water-tight container that is still small enough for you to dump and clean periodically.

Random Tidbit

Ducks are birds so they do have wings and can fly. However, most ducks that have been bred for meat and eggs are heavy bodied and don’t really realize they can fly. Besides, they’d usually rather stay where there’s easy access to food, water, and shelter.

If you decide to keep mallards or similarly “wild” ducks, you may experience loss, especially if you free range them around your property.

Sand Creek Farm can teach you to clip your duck wings to prevent them from flying, though I don’t recommend this if you have heavy predator pressure. In an emergent situation, a duck can fly to safety but not if you’ve clipped their wings.

Raising Ducks for Meat

While chickens are still the backyard homestead bird of choice, ducks are rising in popularity. Ducks generally forage and pasture more efficiently than chickens, are generally less dramatic, and certainly smarter.

Duck meat is usually classified as white meat in the U.S., however their meat is a bit darker than chicken because of different muscle composition. Chickens are land fowl; ducks are water fowl.

You can raise any breed of duck and harvest it for meat, but some taste and cook up better than others. Some popular meat duck breeds are:

Pekin – the famous Chinese dish of the same name is traditionally prepared with this breed.

Jumbo Pekin – a variety that have been bred to grow bigger, from 9-14lbs (which is huge for a duck)!

Appleyard – an excellent dual purpose breed (meaning it’s good for eggs, too) and one of my absolute favorite breeds of duck.

Muscovy – not great for eggs but fantastic for meat production, these are a quiet duck in that they can’t quack (they make this kind of hissing sound).

The Realities of Plucking

Plucking a chicken is always going to be easier than plucking a duck come harvest time. All water fowl have an extra layer of down feathers that keep the buoyant and insulated in the water. Chickens don’t have that extra layer.

Down feathers are highly desirable for stuffing pillow, duvets, and handmade dolls but they are a bear to pluck. It takes me twice as long to pluck a duck or goose as it does to pluck a chicken.

I’m still cautiously hopeful that I’ll find a way to use the electric chicken plucker successfully with water fowl but I haven’t as of yet. I’m sure the key lies in dumping the carcass into boiling hot water for a bit longer than I would a chicken.

Still, I’m nervous about cooking the meat trying to get the down feathers to release. I haven’t found a sweet spot yet but at least the down feathers are nice to have.

Bottom line, plan to take longer plucking ducks than you would chickens.

FAQs for Raising Ducks for Meat

If you haven’t considered raising ducks for meat, perhaps this next FAQ section will be helpful. All in all, if you’ve raised chickens for meat before, you can easily raise ducks, as well.

Can you raise ducks for food?

Yes! I know we’re used to thinking of chickens first when we think of both homestead meat and eggs. However, it’s not ducks vs. chickens – you can have both, if you like. Ducks are smart, hardy, easy to pasture, and great foragers.

How long does it take to raise ducks for meat?

Harvest time varies for each duck breed, but generally you should plan to harvest meat ducks around 7-9 weeks. Some birds, especially heavier ones, do grow a little slower than others so know your breed.

As with any meat harvest, make sure you’ve cleared enough time in your schedule and have all your equipment ready to go beforehand.

How many ducks should you start with?

The answer to this question is completely dependent on how much space you have on your homestead to be raising ducks. If the ducks will be in the coop all day and night, you’ll want to give them as much as 10-15 sq. ft. per bird. If the ducks will range during the day and only be in the coop at night, you can keep them in a coop with as little as 4-6 sq. ft. per bird.

On one homestead, we started with a simple breeding trio of Khaki Campbells – one drake, two hens. With this group, we were mostly interested in quality genetics, the ability for them to raise their own ducklings, and egg production.

On another homestead, we started our duck flock with 25 Appleyards and our focus was meat production. We had a lot more room to pasture the ducks every day on this piece of land.

With that flock, we looked for broody hens willing to hatch ducklings. We also added some Runner and Cayuga ducks to that flock when we were ready for egg production.

Those are all fabulous breeds and I highly recommend them!

Raising Ducks for Eggs

Many homesteaders are very accustomed to raising chickens for eggs, but ducks do have some advantages over chickens. Typically, ducks are:

Equal or better layers than chickens
Lay all year and often more consistently
Less competitive, obnoxious, and dramatic
Better foragers and free-rangers on pasture
Usually a lot quieter than chickens (great for urban homesteaders, though quiet is a relative term)

FAQs for Raising Ducks for Eggs

There are some breeds of duck that can outlay a chicken any day of the year, so if it’s eggs you’re looking for, just think about ducks!

Duck eggs are larger and far more dense than chicken eggs. They bake up fluffier and some bakers prefer them over chicken eggs for that reason.

Is it worth raising ducks for eggs?

Yes, especially if you’d like larger eggs thank chicken or quail eggs! Ducks are consistent layers and aren’t as effected by the seasons as chickens are.

Plus, duck eggs have a rich flavor!

How many ducks should I get for eggs?

Again, the answer to this is relative to the size of your homestead, or the space you have to house and pasture the ducks. Follow the same basic recommendations as for raising meat ducks.

I should put a little note in here that ducks are messy. MESSY. Seriously, how are they so messy?!!

I recommend that you plan to let them free range on pasture or even your back lawn and that you move them frequently, even a few times a day. Consistent rotation of their pasture area will help them stay clean and prevent muddy, poopy, yucky mess from building up in any one area of your homestead.

Again, be prepared to rotate the pasture area of your ducks to help keep them clean. If you just don’t have to space to do that very often, keep your flock small.

You can also use mulch like straw and wood chips to keep run areas clean and dry, but you’ll need a constant supply because…

DUCKS ARE MESSY!

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

More FAQs on Raising Ducks for Eggs

The first time I tried them, I thought duck eggs had a distinct flavor that I didn’t much like. A few years later, I tried them again and found them to be quite tasty.

I’ve discovered that, as I raise more of my own food, my tastes change over time to adapt to a less commercial, more natural flavor. If at first you don’t like the flavor of something you’ve grown, give it time. You might just change your mind and your palate!

What is the best duck to raise for eggs?

As far as production numbers go, very few breeds will exceed Khaki Campbells who can lay between 250 and 340 eggs per year with good health and quality environment. Raising Ducks has a nice outline of the 10 best breeds of duck for egg production. Of their list, I’ve only not raised two of these breeds – Magpies and Rangers.

All the others on their list we’ve raised with great success and as a bonus, several are quality meat birds, as well.

The 104 Homestead has some good advice on duck breeds to consider for the homestead.

Also, Souly Rested shares with you everything you need to know about duck eggs.

Do egg-laying ducks need a pond?

This is THE most common question when it comes to ducks in general. I’ll say again that ducks are water fowl and their natural inclination is to play in, clean with, relax in, and drink gobs of water all day long. They looooooooove water! (Which is part of why they’re so messy.)

To keep them healthy and naturally happy, be prepared to provide a small water tank or kiddie pool for them to play in every day unless you have a pond. You will read plenty of people online saying that you can raise ducks without a pond or pool of any kind.

While this is true, you can go all day just eating bran cereal. You can also be confined in a house for two months without leaving, or go without seeing the sunshine for weeks on end. You can survive any of these scenarios but they wouldn’t leave you feeling happy, healthy, or whole.

It’s the same for ducks and water. A Farm Girl in the Making can help you set up a pond for ducks that they will love.

Other FAQs of Raising Ducks

Are ducks easy to raise?

Harder than a dog, easier than a cow. That’s my opinion on the ease of raising ducks. They require daily maintenance of water and food and fence checks. However, you don’t have to milk them and they’re not bigger than you are and, therefore, potentially dangerous.

Do ducks need a coop?

To maintain health, ease of access for you, protection from predators, yes ducks need a coop.

Can I have ducks without a pond?

Yes, you can have ducks without a pond but for their health and happiness, be prepared to provide a small pool or stock tank filled with water. Be sure that when it’s filled, you’re still able to tip out the pool for cleaning.

Can I let my ducks free range?

Yes, but I advise you use fencing of some kind to keep them collected in one safe space, especially if you have a small lot or heavy predator presence. Also, be prepared to consistently rotate where the ducks range to prevent build up of mess and poop.