Baby Parenting Guide

How do you care for a baby duck?

I would really like to know how to take care of a baby duck, Can you train them? What do you keep them in? How do you keep them out of their food and drinking water?

Public Response to How do you care for a baby duck?

1. http://www.liveducks.com/faqs.html#tips this website should help you
2. usually the better bred baby ducks, are eassssssier to train. You keep them in comfortable, yet decorative and elaborate nursssssseriesssss. Generally a duck that has been raissssed with the besssssst education, and always being taught the finesssst in manners, will inssssstinctively ssssssstay out of itsssss food and drinking water.
3. you know how to look after it you said yourself, you will not keep it out of its food, it loves its only dirty to you surroundings, just clean up every day after you put it away for the night, later as he grows his feathers he will need something bigger like a washing up bowl, do not give him this until then or he will drown, sounds silly but it has no mother to make its baby down water proof, this is done from a gland on the top of the mothers tail, and its called preening, so feed and water it , if you have a garden let him roam in it no better thing to keep the slugs away and it does not damage the plants, if you have another question put it on under travel/ egypt/tomorrow and i will answer a specific ?
4. Well you sometimes can train them. You can keep them in a bath tub. You can hold them and make it eat try to.
5. Hi. Depending on the type of duck, some can be trained. Keep them in a dog pen if they are indoors, but with lots of "outside" time. Keeping them out of food and water means getting special dishes just for this. Any good farm supply store will have special dishes which have holes for the beak, and a sloped top so that ducks and poultry can't get into the dish. I'm including a link for the actual "Care" of the duckling. Ducks get big and male ducks, at maturity, can get a little bit mean. If you want a pet duck try to get a female. Make sure to feed appropriate food. Most ducks eat poultry food. Muscovies eat game bird food. Babies need crumbles, and adults get pellets. You can supplement food with scratch grain (but not too much, and not until they are a couple weeks old). Bread should be kept as a once in a while thing. Although, you may find that young ducks have a love of "milk sop". Milk sop is when you soak stale bread in milk so that it's mushy. It's got calcium and protien and while it shouldn't be fed regularly it makes a great treat. Best of luck.
6. Ducks are great pets. They are hard to keep out of their water because that is a natural instinct for them and so they are needing to always be in and or near water. We bought a kids little swimming pool for them to use when they are small. They go to the ponds now that they are grown. When they are small they can be in the water for short periods of time, their mother has natural oils to help repel the water and so they have some but not the mother's to help repel the water so they will get wet and die if they are exposed for too long of a time. They are trainable depending on how much time you can spend with them. Patience is the key. Until they have their feathers they need to stay in a box of some type with a heat lamp. They have to stay really warm @ 100 degrees and when they get their feathers they can be put outside in a cage or loose if you live out of town. They have to be put up at dusk so they don't get eaten! Even neighborhood dogs make packs at night and go scouting for something to get into, so a duck would not only be fun for them but also tasty!! If you feed them in the evening at about dusk everyday in their pen they will meet you there and it won't be any trouble to put them up in the evenings.