[Thrift]

As I know many of you keep both ducks and hens, I wonder do you house them together or separately at night?

In the past we put them all together but found the ducks, with their need for constant water when feeding, made the henhouse very wet and messy. We have replaced our hens and are thinking about ducks but wonder would they be better in their own house and if so what sort of design.

Any ideas gratefully received, thanks. 

[Springlands]

Hi Thrift - we have both hens and ducks and they spend the day together in a very large pen. At night the hens sleep in their coup and the ducks use a modified eglu which also has the wire cage attached to it -this means that the ducks have to choice of either sheltering in the enclosed part of the eglu of sleeping out of doors but they are still safe from Mr Fox in case he manages to get into the run (has not happened so far).

What we find is that the ducks seem to like to sleep out doors and they only use the actual eglu on very wet or cold nights.

[bertiewhite]

We have had Chickens for over a year now & recently got 5 runner ducks (2 males, 3 females) They are housed in seperate areas of the garden but when the 2 drakes started fighting, we placed the smaller of them in with the chickens and whilst they tolerated the visitor, there was an amount of bullying every now and again until we found a new home for the drake. It may be that our 2 pens are big enough for each type of fowl with it's own kind but not together and given a large area I should think they'd get along but my ever more knowledgable partner says she has never kept hens & ducks together before.

[Thrift]

Thank you both for the replies. We always found ours got on together but had different lifestyles  so sleeping apart might be easier.

A different question bertie ..... do your runners lay lovely green eggs?

[bertiewhite]

Out of the 3 females we usually get 2 slightly green/blue tinted & one pure white. Interestingly enough, whilst the 2 males were fighting, we had nothing and the very day we seperated them, the females started bobbing their heads & following the remaining male and started laying 2 days later!!

[rossivale]

Hi, I have 18 ducks and 1 drake sharing a large run, (free range garden when I am home) with 11 hens, and they all sleep together in a large shed, the hens roost up on perches, and they all get a long fine, although some mornings the ducks come out with a little hen poop in them  but other than that, no problems at all

And when I go into the run with a spade they all gather around, and the ducks seem to enjoy the fact that the hens scratch away at the ground, and the ducks then catch the worms