Having one or more ornamental ducks in your garden is quite possible. Provided you have room to reserve a corner for them. Because if ducks are nice and can become real pets, they are also a little dirty animals.
Muscovy duck? A real little pig. It splashes around, it splashes around, it makes little holes in the ground with its little teeth (yes the duck has teeth!), to look for pebbles.
The palm of the most cracra duck goes to the Muscovy duck, explains Didier Macrez, a poultry enthusiast: “This duck was born from crosses between the musk duck (Cairini moschata) and the wild duck, a migrant. It is a duck always very dirty. He soaks himself, snorts, goes anywhere, flounders in anything. The other ducks are a little cleaner… But in any case, if you want to hatch duck eggs, do not mix them with chicken eggs. Duck eggs carry parasites that can contaminate those of hens.
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The Muscovy duck is one of the largest ducks along with the Peking duck and the Rouen duck
Didier Macrezat franceinfo
Unlike hens, ducks do not lay eggs all the time, but only twice a year. The cane “Emerald” for example lays in April then in September. She lays her eggs in a completely crazy nest on the ground. When the eggs are about ten in number, she begins to hatch while continuing to lay.
There is a breed of duck that is very fashionable in gardens at the moment: the Indian runner. A funny bird! “It is a duck that stands almost vertically. When it moves, it looks like it is running, hence its nickname. It is raised and released by the thousands in the rice fields in Vietnam. It replaces the pesticides because it is a hell of a glutton, capable of devouring everything that passes in front of its beak”, says Didier Macrez.
It is said that in our gardens the Indian runner eats more slugs and snails than the others. It’s not true, but it’s a cool critter to have in the garden. If you decide to have ducks in your garden, build them a tightly closed enclosure for the night, to avoid them being used as snacks by the weasels.