Urban Ducks

I do not have ducks anymore due to a raccoon, but we are preparing to get ducks again. This has been our experience so far with having urban ducks.

We had Pekins and Khaki Campbells recently and adored them.

Here are some of our big pros for having ducks in an urban setting:

The Khakis were exceptionally quiet, and the Pekins could not be heard from the sidewalk (unless we were putting them to bed, in which case they yelled at us.)
All of the ducks had no problem staying inside our fenced in back yard.
They were happy with their kiddie pool, which was easy to dump and fill every few days. Pond would have been nice, but it was not required.
The ducks couldn't get on our deck with their big funny feet, so no bird poop all over our deck.
Our friendly old dog could wander through the ducks, and they just avoided him. Nothing aggressive about a duck (in our experience).
Our ducks were exceptionally dumb, and it was very cute

Cons:
We had never had a predator problem before having ducks, and then we lost all the ducks and some rabbits. I think the ducks were just too irresistible for the raccoon.
Our ducks didn't know how to put themselves to bed, so the process was a bit louder and longer than chickens would have been.
Our ducks were exceptionally dumb, and it was sometimes annoying

All in all, we loved the ducks and we're looking for replacements. We've purchased new housing for them so we can avoid the raccoon problem moving forward.

Hi Carmen,

I hope your second experience with ducks goes better than the last. I definitely agree with a lot of your points about the pros and cons to owning ducks. For predator protection, I would recommend covering their coop/pen in 1/4¨ hardware cloth and skirting it out along the bottom of the pen as well to prevent any animals from digging underneath. Raccoons are very good at sticking their hands through the fence to pull poultry out, which is why the fencing can only have 1/4¨ holes.

Also if you´re looking for quiet ducks, a bachelor flock is a great idea (if you don´t want eggs of course). Muscovy ducks are quite large but relatively quiet too.

A friend of mine was recommending Australian Spotted Bantam Ducks if you need/want a quieter breed. Apparently, despite the name, the breed was evolved in California! (Unless she was mis-remembering.)

Personally, I find my Khakis can be quite loud, but I am known for noise sensitivity.

I totally agree that raccoon need to be excluded with serious fencing. We have had problems when a family would turn bad while teaching their kits to hunt, because they would frighten the birds from multiple directions at once.

How did you begin raising ducks in an urban setting? I have wanted to start with livestock of some sort but could never get over the hurdle of my urban enviornment?

Our main plan is a hardware cloth situation, we just haven't dreamed it up yet. We may not reintroduce ducks this season because things are just already well underway and we cantadd them to the juggle now.

I like the idea of a duck quieter than a khaki. I'll have to check out these recs when I'm ready. I found them to be very quiet, mainly because the Pekins were very loud.  

First step to having livestock is having understanding neighbors, reasonable livestock discernment skills, and privacy fencing. Some of your neighbors will know, and you have to know those neighbors.

My main livestock is rabbits, and I highly recommend them to any urban homesteader. Ducks are my second favorite, then quail. We're considering bantam varieties right now, and still in the troubleshooting phase of "which egg layer suits my homestead the best?" We're enjoying the journey.