Yellow ducklings in a wooden basket on a background of green grass

When we moved to our new house, I knew that I wanted to bring home some baby ducklings as soon as we were set up for them. I have always loved ducks. As an avid baker who prizes their eggs, I’ve dreamed of having my own small flock of layers for years. Because I am lucky enough to work for McMurray Hatchery, I’ve spent many hours reading everything duck. From learning about different breeds and health considerations to reading about housing needs and feeding requirements, I did my due diligence before dipping my toes into the wonderful world of raising backyard ducks for the first time.

I followed the same basic brooder setup that I always use when raising backyard chicks. Because I had recently raised a group of chicks and transitioned them into our main coop, I had all of the supplies on hand that I needed for raising ducklings.

For the first week, we brought our ducklings outside for supervised play time. By the second week, i was able to transition them to living in an outdoor brooder during the day, and I brought them back in to their smaller brooder at night. Following Ann Accetta-Scott’s advice on raising ducklings, I stopped keeping their feed and water in the brooder overnight around week five. This helped keep their indoor brooder cleaner for longer, too!

Overall, I loved raising backyard ducklings…and happily look forward to it again this summer. Our ducks are excellent foragers with wonderful personalities. I’m already using their bedding and manure to enrich our garden, and I look forward to their help with slug duty this spring and summer. Best of all, I love waking up to their eggs each morning. My grandparents can attest that my baking has certainly leveled up since our ducks began to lay!

You know the green-headed males. On females, note the relatively strong eyeline compared to most other species. Mallards are our most familiar duck and the only one present all year-round in large numbers. This circumstance should be taken not as license to ignore them, but as an invitation to enjoy watching their cute, fuzzy babies from May through August.

Males have a dark rump; both sexes have little white squares in the wing (the speculum), sometimes visible. In much of Marin, gadwalls take a distant second place for ducks you might see in summer, as well as becoming abundant in winter. Breeding gadwall are an uncommon but not unheard of Bay Area phenomenon, while you can usually find a few non-breeding birds scattered around.

In a nicely lit picture, the male’s head shows a clear green eye patch, but from many angles these luminescent feathers may appear dark or colorless. The “bald” patch on the front of the forehead is a little easier to see, but also subject to variable lighting. On males, look also for the dark rump bordered by white.

One of the easiest ducks to recognize due to the extremely large (“spatulate”) bill and distinct set of colors: dark green head, white breast and rump, reddish flanks. To begin developing attentiveness to the shape of different ducks, start with female shovelers and find those shovel mouths.

Males have long necks adorned with an elegant white stripe, as well as their namesake pintail. This might be the next dabbler to practice recognizing by shape alone: the long neck is usually perceptible on both sexes.