The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Poultry & Waterfowl => Topic started by: HesterF on August 25, 2012, 06:48:41 pm
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Hi,
I have been looking for a trio or quartet of LF Appleyards (and have just discovered Preloved as a seemingly huge source of poultry :)). The closest to us has two pairs of breeding Appleyards and is (unsurprisingly) not happy to split one pair to make a trio. He's offered me both pairs but I don't know how that will work. Will the drakes not fight each other? I had the impression they were like most chicken breeds except drakes are even more voracious than cocks and I needed to have a high level of ducks per drake. In which case, would I be better just to take one pair and then get some additional ducks at some point? Just seems to be hard to find ducks on their own.
Thanks,
Hester
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You could take a pair, breed from them, keep the girls and eat the boys.
I'm not sure that two pairs is a great idea either. My general feeling is a minimum of three ducks to one drake,p.
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when i first got appleyards i had two drakes that i rescued from a dodgy auction and they loved each other they went everywhere together and were the best of friends until a rogue dog attacked and killed most of my ducks one of the boys survived but the other sadly did not, i did have snowy campbells at the time but the boys got on great so if you got two pairs of appleyards they would be fine if you had other ducks for them to hang out with they dont have to be appleyards... hope this helps.
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Thanks! These are the first ducks so the only other company will be hens and a pair of geese (yet to arrive) so it sounds safer to go with the pair to begin with. Next bridge will be to avoid breeding with a father/daughter combination but I guess that's 18 months off!
H
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And doing it once isn't the end of the world - repeat inbreeding would be.