Feeding and keeping ducklings in the first 3 weeks of life.
On this topic, you can find many articles on how to care for little ducklings at home. Every pros has their own special method and everybody has their own different advice. Here we will tell you how to properly care for newborn ducklings in the first days of their life. Perhaps our good advice will help beginners.
The first question that may arise: Do they eat at all? It happens that tiny birds cannot eat on their own and without your help they will simply die of hunger. If you are faced with this, you will have to forcibly pour a weak solution of potassium permanganate into their yellow mouth from a pipette into their yellow mouth, completely, slightly pinkish. Then boil one simple egg and scatter it so that the little birds can see it. Appetite should appear immediately after this.
The first three days of their life, you must feed them with foods strictly those that contain proteins. That is, put them on a protein diet. For example, they can be fed with cottage cheese, but not fatty, boiled egg, or milk-based products. But then they need to be taught to eat green fodder, because then they will have to eat on their own already in the pastures. In the very first pores of their lives, small birds eat well scalded and finely chopped nettle leaves, they should be mixed with cottage cheese or a boiled egg.
After a certain time from their birth, you can start giving them a mash of boiled roots and grain. Do not forget about the fact that little ducks love this, for them it is considered a kind of delicacy - duckweed from an open reservoir. They can consume it in large quantities. You need to feed small birds at least every five or six hours.
If you want to send ducklings to swim in the pond and play with some water, then you need to do this when they are at least two weeks old. When they reach this age, it is already possible to feed them two or three times a day, for example, in the morning and then in the evening, but just do not try to feed them a lot.
With the beginning of their life, and in the future, the birds need minerals. There are such special feeding, for example: loose chalk or shell rock. Water for ducklings should always be freely available, clean, fresh, warm, they need to drink a lot.
PhotoThe better and more varied their food, the faster they will start to grow, the better their body will work and they will begin to gain weight quickly. It is best to use a combined feed, with the addition of any dairy products, such a delicacy is quickly eaten by ducks. The main thing is to choose the right and balanced diet in order to raise healthy and good birds.
Their diet should contain vitamins, minerals, proteins. You can mix pea, barley, wheat, corn cereals in equal proportions. And add finely chopped carrots, boiled potatoes, fresh cabbage, zucchini and pumpkins to them, you can use any vegetables for these purposes. You can give such dishes three times a day, sometimes spoil them with grain that has sprouted.
When the ducklings have already grown a little and are at the age of two months, they will have to eat three hundred grams of feed per day. And when they already grow to adults, you will give a hundred grams more.
Detailed description:
Diet: Feeding the ducklings in the first 3 weeks of life.
Great and serious preparation of the place for the content, inventory and equipment is of great importance. It is advisable to repair the room well, clean it and thoroughly wash it with boiling water. Fill the floors with quicklime two to three centimeters long, and you need to lay fifteen or twenty centimeters of straw. The room must be ventilated and warmed up well. After such detailed preparation, you can move in small residents. One square meter can accommodate about fifteen heads.
If you are taking ducklings from the incubator, then you need to bring them home as soon as possible. Remember, the quicker the little ones get their food, the better they will grow. But you don't need to feed them on the way.
Be aware that overheating or cold is bad for small ducklings. If the air temperature is too high, then their metabolism will be disrupted, there will be delays in their growth and, of course, in development. With a long stay in the cold, babies will get cold. They will want to keep warm and huddle together in a large group in a tight corner. As a result, many small chicks can die.
Real poultry farmers know how to adjust the temperature for them. They watch their behavior. At a good temperature, the ducklings are nimble and vigorous, they have a good appetite, they calmly drink water and eat food. With the wrong temperature, of course, everything is different.
Ducklings definitely need fresh air from their first days of life, they need it. It is necessary to ventilate the room as often as possible, and do not forget about it! But be sure to cover the frames with a cloth to keep the ducklings from freezing. And you do not need to create a draft, so you will ruin them.
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It is recommended for the first six days to keep the ducklings at twenty-four hours of light, that is, the light should be on for a whole full day in the room. From seven to twenty days, you can reduce the light to sixteen hours, it is better to use electric lamps.
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