Compost ducks?

[HomesteadDucks]

I was thinking of setting up their bath water to the rain gutter. That'd be the permaculture solution to water waste if it works. Hopefully it would keep the water clean too.

 

[tactilecontact]

That's what we have our two barrels set up for. It doesn't really help to keep it clean, but definitely cuts down on our city water use. We connected rain gutters to the duckhouse, and that water runs into and is stored in the barrels for their drinking water and their bath water, with pvc pipe that drains the water into their drinking bucket and bath. I'm hoping to add another pair of barrels this year, to cover even more duck and garden veggie use. Maybe even running a gutter system along the garden fence itself to collect as much as possible.

 

[Kimmyh51]

This is a fantastic article for anyone interested in utilizing foraging breeds in their gardening system for composting and more. It definitely persuaded my decision to set up our duck house and run right inside our fenced garden.

http://permaculturenews.org/2014/07/31/ducks-permaculture-system-scotland/

How did you prevent your ducks eating your crops? I keep reading about articles where people have their ducks wandering arojnd their vegie garden eating the slugs and snails, and leaving their vegetables alone. The slugs and snails i am sure my ducks would eat, but any time they get anywhere near a vegie garden they decimate the entire thing in no time at all.
They rip all the vegies out by the roots and turn the entire area into mud within literally minutes, an hr tops.

i am baffled as to how people get their ducks to not eat their vegetables in the garden? My ducks find the vegies as much, if not more appealing than the bugs. Definitely more so than slugs and snails. Worms they would prefer over vegies but there are not enough of those to fill them up and anyway of they eat all the worms and that isnt good!

The ducks in question were being fed pelleted feed which they love, ad lib plus grains, plus regular daily vegie scraps which they loved from a local fruit and vegie place, but still if they got near my vegies garden, it was good bye forever, to anything in it!

Having said the above, I have been a tenant, not a land owner since having ducks - so my vegie garden space has always been limited by my landlords rules. I am hoping to buy my own land soon and would love to have a vegetable garden to provide food for me and for my ducks. But i cannot imagine that working, unless the ducks are 100% fenced out (including overhead as i have flying ducks as well as domestics)

So please….What?! magic are you people performing???


By magic I mean where your ducks just roam around your vegetable gardens only eating slugs and snails and not decimating the garden? And how many ducks Is this?

Last time i opened an admittedly small, vegie patch up to the ducks, it took 2-3 of them around 15-20 minutes to turn beetroot, some kale, cauli, sprouts, a little bit of lettuce, and even a potato plant (yep thats supposed to be toxic but they ate it anyway and no one got sick) and some spring onion - (also supposedly toxic and eaten and no one got sick!) into just mud….nothing at all left of the vegetables, not a single leaf or stalk or root…nothing….. it was as devoid of life as mars or the moon…