dj:

When you put ducks out there in the orchard or yard, you are acquiring a new hobby -- really two new hobbies -- care of the ducks, and fox control. If you enjoy doing these things, I think keeping ducks is great. You would hardly believe the lengths I go to to protect my little call ducks. The big red-tailed hawks are interested, but rarely kill a duck (I have lost only one to a hawk in 6 years). But unless the foxes are securely fenced out or dealt with in some other fashion they will devastate unprotected ducks.

My little ducks forage continuously in the orchard, but are not successful at Japanese beetle control for two reasons: The beetles have very hard shells and an unpalatable taste, and they are normally up in the trees, not on the ground. Grasshoppers, crickets, and other softer-bodied insescts, as well as grubs close to the surface, are a different matter, and the ducks deal with those very effectively. The ducks do not bother my fruit, but they will eat the leaves of young plants like peppers, which requires me to protect these plants with a small fence.

The way to eliminate Japanese beetles is milky spore, the pure spawn stuff, which is expensive initially but lasts for many years, and can be effective even when applied at a much lower rate than recommended on the can.

Egg-laying season with my little ducks (less than 2 pounds each) begins now, and the eggs are delicious if you can keep the ducks confined to an area where you can find their nests. I hatch out a couple dozen ducklings in the incubator every spring in April/May, then give them away to people who like them and have a pond, which is essential to raising ducks. If the pond freezes over you have to have alternative housing for the ducks, or it is dinnertime for the foxes.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Here ducks seem to be OK if they have access to water they can run to when threatened (and a raft they can sleep on at night, well away from the shore). Have to be able to get there ahead of the predator, of course. At another wooded location I volunteered at years ago the caretaker claimed there had been a problem with great horned owls dropping onto the muscovy(!) ducks there. Even though these had a pond (which they seemed to stay very close to) they weren't, of course in the water all of the time.

I've seen a red-tailed hawk go for a hen right in front of me, but not a duck. Around here we have bald eagles, red-tailed hawks, goshawks (during the winter), coyotes, dogs and cats all on the list of potential threats. Bald eageles in particular you would expect to swoop down onto flocks of captive ducks but I haven't actually seen or heard of this.

We also have peregrine falcons (duck hawks) but these go mostly - if not exclusively - for flying birds.

Around here great horned owls have a reputation for being serious predators and are accused of being hard on domestic cats; recently a skier wandered into territorial snows of a great horned and had to have stitches following an attack. I was once "swooped" by a bald eagle while fly fishing, but it apparently was not in earnest.

The ducks on the river here disappear pretty quickly when an eagle flys in.

Good luck,

M

Thanks all for the advice.

Yall have me rethinking getting ducks and leaning towards guineas again. I assume that they would be easier to protect from foxes because they roost at night (and we haven't put in a pond yet). We hope to put in a pond at some point, so I might hold off getting ducks until then. Although, I was going to put an electric fence around my orchard anyway, so maybe a few low wires outside of chicken wire would be enough?

And, Don, as for milky spore, how low a rate of application have you found effective? I haven't bothered b/c of the price combined with the fact I have 30 AC of pasture bordering my orchard (which provides breeding ground for hordes of japanese beetles and grasshoppers). I was going to apply nolo bait (enough for the whole pasture is much more affordable that milky spore) this year b/c the grasshoppers were worse than the beetles last year. I could somewhat control the beetles with surround, pyrethrin, and hand picking, but nothing stopped the grasshoppers (they not only ate leaves, they girdled new growth, and even ate blueberry leaves/stems). I gave up on planting a fall garden b/c they chopped down seedlings (and ate through window screening placed over the seedlings).

dj

Do you feed your orchard ducks the same amount as you would confined ducks? I have a muscovy duck and a drake and their nine 2mo old ducklings in my citrus orchard, and they seem to spend most of their time eating and resting under shady trees. Now that the ducklings are leaving the growth spurt stages in thinking of reducing feed to encourage foraging. They need to start earning their keep or it's duck for dinner! Thoughts?

I thought about getting ducks to control grasshoppers at my place. Though I doubt they would last more than a couple days. Between the bobcats, foxes, and coyotes they wouldn't stand a chance.