As of 2021, I no longer keep muscovies as we have moved to a different property that isn’t suitable for them. I will keep this up for people considering them.
I love my muscovy ducks (cairina moschata var. domestica). These quiet, calm creatures that amble around my backyard hoovering up all manner of pest and bugs and providing companionship while I garden.
They’re my first line security defense against deer ticks that have been hitching a ride into my backyard on the backs of the menacing ungulates, and my go-to remedy for the gypsy moth invasion that had defoliated much of my plants last year and the year before (those things have been the bane of many Long Islanders in recent times). They clear the backyard of mosquitos (which some believe they derive their name from) and flies, keeping their heads low as they hunt for them in the grass. They really don’t eat feed, and turn their noses up at the pellets I have thrown them, preferring to rummage around the fallen leaves for wriggly goodies and sprouts.
They produce huge (and I mean HUGE), delicious eggs daily that have now replaced chicken eggs in my household. Is it any wonder why I absolutely adore them?
The Good
I’ve also had chickens and regular mallard-derived ducks (all other domestic utility ducks besides the muscovy are descended from the mallard) which gave me a good basis for comparison, and muscovies have become my absolute favorite all-purpose poultry. If you are considering them, here are the pros as to why I prefer them over all other farmyard birds.
1. Muscovies are quiet. This is my biggest reason by far. The females, unlike those of the pekins or cayugas, don’t quack (although you can startle them into doing so–but you’d have to try really, really hard.) They make soft trills and coos, similar to the calls of doves. The males huff and puff, and although it sounds menacing (a hissing goose is quite intimidating!), it can mean anything from “I’m hungry!” to “I’m happy to see you!” to, of course “Stay away! I’m big and mean!” It’s all in the context.
I mentioned before I’ve had regular ducks and those silly things kept us hostage in our own house. Even though their pen was set half an acre back, their eyesight was so sharp that if they spotted movement or light coming from our house, they’d set up a squabble of quacks that pierced through our double paned windows! We literally had to duck (no pun intended) under the windows if we were to go into the kitchen, because if they saw us, they’d start up their unholy quacking and I feared they were getting on the nerves of our neighbors. They were cute and friendly, but the quacking absolutely drove me nuts.
With muscovies, sometimes you’ll forget you even have poultry. They’re that silent. Chicken hens will often still make enough noise that I remember that yes, I have chickens.
2. Muscovy eggs are a-ma-zing. Their egg laying capabilities rival those of dual-purpose chickens. Upwards of 200 eggs a year. Since about early April, we’ve consistently gotten about an egg a day from each of our laying girls. And what eggs they are! If you’ve never had a duck egg, it is a treat to behold. The yolks are double the size of chicken egg yolks, whereas the entire egg itself is about the size of a jumbo chicken egg. Of course, that means their cholesterol is also double, but I choose to consciously ignore that part.
For those with chicken egg allergies, duck eggs are often the answer because their protein structure is different and many people who are allergic to chicken eggs are not allergic to duck eggs!Their lay life is also longer–some owners report their muscovies laying productively into 6 years old! That’s pretty much their entire life (lifespan is about 8 years in captivity, although your mileage may vary). Chickens are usually culled after two or three years as they either greatly slow down or stop laying altogether. This is great for those that are worried about what to do with retired poultry and don’t have the heart to kill them, but don’t have the space to keep them either. (Update April 2018–my old blue girl who is 5 this year is giving me an egg a day. She started about two weeks later than the rest, and may end the season sooner, but hey, that’s pretty good for them!)
They are a joy to bake with because they have the ability to make your cakes extra fluffy, and potato gnocchi made with fresh duck eggs are tender, pillowy, delights (ask me how I know).
The eggs themselves are richer tasting, and have less water content, so this means when you cook with them, you have to adjust and account for the difference. Cooking them too long or over too high heat could lead to rubbery inedible monstrosities.
3. They don’t smell the way chickens do! Chicken poop sadly, smells like something crawled up Satan’s anus and died. If you accidentally brush up against it when you’re inspecting/cleaning the coop, you’ll look around wildly when the smell follows you inside. Heaven forbid you tracked some on your shoe because you let them free range–your yard becomes a less fun, and more anxiety inducing version of The Floor Is Lava.
Duck poop is like geese poop, except more watery. It washes away when you turn on your sprinklers or hose your lawn down. It smells faintly grassy, although the coop will have whiffs of ammonia. Duck poop in the coop makes the straw into a flat pancake that I break up and lay as mulch over my fruits and vegetables (if you’ve never mulched with straw, you really should try–it’s fabulous). Did I mention you can directly use their poop as fertilizer without having to compost it for a year the way you do for chicken poop? It won’t cause root burn because it’s nitrogen content is nowhere near as high as chicken poop.
4. Muscovies, and ducks in general, are healthier than chickens. Waterfowl are less prone to illnesses, diseases, and parasites than chickens, and therefore they can stay unmedicated when it comes to feed and vaccines. I belong to several poultry forums and rarely see medical issues with adult ducks posted, but see them often with chickens. The most common issue with ducks that come up are actually related to ducklings, in that they sometimes don’t get enough niacin in the starter/growers feed and haven neurological issues. Nothing that giving them either niacin supplements or brewer’s/nutritional yeast can’t help. They’re also far more cold-hardy than chickens.
That’s not to say ducks don’t have problems at all, but they are lower maintenance as far as their health goes.
5. Muscovies especially, are great for pest control. They tend to eat anything that moves and that they can put down their throats, including houseflies and mosquitoes and ticks. I’ve had ducks pick the bloodsuckers off of me as I’m kneeling and working in the garden! In general, once the ducks are out early morning, mosquitoes are gone from the yard until dusk, when I’ve locked them in their coop. It’s the best when we have a barbecue and are worried about being eaten alive, especially since we live close to a lake.
I especially enjoy watching them “hunt” for bugs that fly. They stretch their necks long and low to the ground, like a homing missile, and snap up any that happen to be in their way. This hunting instinct seems to be innate, as young ducklings, only a few weeks old, do it as well.
It’s also hilarious, because sometimes during the mornings when I let them out, and there are clouds of gnats swirling in the air, the ducks will stand on their tippy toes and very quickly open and close their beaks while waving their heads around in an attempt to get as many bugs down their gullet as possible. They look comical, and we’ve dubbed our voices over them more than once for some quick humor.
I haven’t had a problem with gypsy moths that have denuded trees (including mine last year) even though there is evidence of them beyond the border of where my ducks are allowed to go. Thankfully, the majority of my yard is kept gypsy moth caterpillar free. When I have the time, I walk with them in the areas that are not closed in so they can get to them too, but for now I’m satisfied I’m not stepping on hundreds of caterpillars every time I go outside.
Chicken owners have said that their chickens won’t touch them.
Please note that I free ranging is NOT best practice in terms of biosecurity/disease and predation risk. You should understand that you will lose birds so if you do not wish for that to occur, then a covered, predator proofed run and coop is necessary for the health and safety of the flock. Utility keepers like myself are willing to deal with the losses, but it is not the safest way to keep them.
6. They eat less feed. If you let them free range, they eat much less feed because they’re busy devouring insects and vegetation. Grass is part of their diet, and they seemed to have rendered my dandelion population to nil. They haven’t touched my ripe alpine strawberry patch, even though they’re foraging in there every day, so it seems they do well with leaving my fruits alone.
I feed my flock of 7 about a pound and a half of pellets at night when I lock them in, and although they like it (which makes locking them in easier), if I give them any more than that, they’ll leave it alone, so it translates to roughly one 40lb bag of feed a month.
*Please note that free ranging comes with risks of death due to predators and disease. It is NOT considered best practice to free range poultry. In my case I recognize the risk and use them as utility, rather than pets. If you can’t bear the thought of losing even one, make sure you keep them in a properly sized and secure coop and run.
7. They’re easy to herd. You ever try to herd a flock of chickens anywhere? They explode in all directions with panicked clucks and you’re left trying to figure out who to chase down first. Muscovies (and ducks in general) are very easy to herd. I simply walk behind them and raise the hand opposite in the direction I want them to go. They stick tight to each other (their flock instinct is strong) and I can get them into their coop (if I need to run out for a bit) at a very leisure pace.
Along the same vein, I find their calm demeanor more meditative than chickens. Chickens always seem more nervous to me, rushing about here and there and scratching with a lot of extra movements. Ducks just amble about at no great pace, their bills rustling under leaves and grass. It makes someone like me, who is prone to being anxious and impatient, a bit more calm in my daily rounds.
8. Easier to integrate new flock members. Introducing new chickens into an established flock is often fraught with fear and uncertainty–an outsider could be pecked to death or severely mauled. Muscovies in general, while they can be nasty to newcomers, tend to accept them much more easily. Their methods of fighting simply include mounting and yanking at feathers, rarely, if ever, drawing blood. Once they’ve re-established their pecking order, all is well, and the group, almost like one organism, go about their day. Even different aged members, as long as they have somewhere they can get away, can be integrated with very little fuss. As of now, I have 7 adults, three 10 week old juveniles, and three 5 week olds free ranging together with very little issue. Sometimes if the younger ones bump into the older ones, the older ones will correct them and chase them a little, but only so far as to maintain good personal space. At night, they all go in the coop, and although the youngest ones are separated using a crate, the juveniles and older ones can stay in it without fighting. Always make sure you practice good biosecurity whenever you introduce new members into your flock. Quarantine for two weeks minimum to make sure they haven’t brought any diseases with them.
9. High sale price. The ducklings and hatching eggs surprisingly fetch a higher sale price than normal mallard derived species–going for as much as $30 per duckling (depending on age) and up to $40 for adults, especially in areas that don’t have muscovy breeders (they do not ship as well as other ducklings do.) I made back my initial investment selling extra ducklings and hatching eggs.
10. Lowfat. If you raise them for meat, I’m told they taste like a nice piece of veal. It’s also very lowfat compared with regular ducks. However, I did hear from one person who tried it that he couldn’t get used to the taste. Foie Gras (duck liver) is often made from the liver of muscovy and regular duck crosses. (These crosses, called moulards, are infertile, much like a cross between a horse and a donkey.)
Edited To Add (Feb, 2018): After processing two of the ducks this year–I can attest to the fact that they are excellent eating–the meat has a sweetness to it that was quite surprising! Here are some of the things I made with them (the carcass went to my parents for soup, which I sadly don’t have a picture of or the recipe for but it was absolutely heavenly.)
Duck Blood Cake From Scratch
Duck Liver and Heart Pate
11. Excellent mothers. You got notoriously difficult to hatch eggs? Muscovy hens are your answer. They’re excellent broodies and have been used to hatch a lot of different types of fowl eggs. Some can successfully hatch up to 25 eggs at a time! On my parents farm, they have to be very diligent about collecting eggs because every so often, a hen will pop up with a brood of ducklings! They are also attentive and protective mothers, but that also means they can get aggressive if you go near their babies!
The Bad
You’ve heard why I love them, but I’d be remiss to omit the not-so-attractive parts about keeping them.
1. Not as friendly. Compared with raising mallard derivative ducklings, muscovies are not as friendly. This is probably my number one issue, in that once they reach adulthood, something switches on and they become a hands-off type poultry. Whereas chickens and other species of duck will enjoy sitting with you and even pet, muscovies have retained their wild side and become wary. Although they still run up to me, they stay arms length away unless I have some treat that distracts them.
So pet they are certainly, and unfortunately, not.
Edited to Add June 2020: This year is the first year (out of 8) I’ve had an exceptionally friendly hatch. So there are cases where they can be friendly, but it may be more genetics than anything else. I don’t know whether or not they will lose this when they fully feather out, but currently they enjoy sitting with us and even sleeping on our laps.
July Update: They have grown out of their cuddliness, much to my despair. They now refuse to be held or touched in any way, but will still follow if I have food.
The drakes (male ducks) can also get ornery, and if you don’t establish your role early, they can bully you. I’ve had my ankles bitten a total of two times, although I’m sure it would be more if I didn’t immediately remedy it by grabbing my male and giving him a hug.
He hates it, and I get to hug a duck while establishing dominance. It’s a win-win for me. I do it every so often if I notice him huffing a bit too much. He occasionally tries to bully my 3 year old, to which I just tell her to give him a hug–and he turns tail and runs. (As I said, he really hates hugs.) *Note that doing this may stop the behavior for a little bit of time, but they view you as competition and will constantly try to aggress you once they have started. Temperament for poultry is often genetic, so culling the aggressive birds should help tame down the flock.
2. Muscovies can fly… and climb. This isn’t as big of an issue if you’have no fear of clipping a few of their primary flight feathers. Males are usually too big and fat to get off the ground, but females can fly and roost in trees if you let them! In fact, in the wild, these ducks will sleep in the trees rather than bed down in the reeds. They also have claws on their feet that mallard ducks lack, and they’re sharp enough to cut if you’re not careful.
These claws also give them the strange ability to scale chain link fences, which would be hilarious if it wasn’t also slightly alarming. If mine are hankering to get out of their run, which is a converted dog kennel, sometimes it’s literally a wall of duck!
3. They drink more water than chickens. While they don’t need a place to swim, ducks require a water source deep enough to wash their nostrils in, and require it while they eat. Ducks have adapted to dabble for their food in the water, which means they can possibly choke if they don’t have water access while they’re stuffing their faces. Although muscovies don’t require or love water as much as other types of ducks, they still need it.
Now, this wouldn’t be an issue if my spigot wasn’t broken in the backyard–so I have to lug a bucket around every morning and night from the front yard to provide them with this. I guess I can consider it exercise… but it does get kind of old when you’re tired or had an exhausting day.
4. Some people think they’re ugly. A lot of people who see them are turned off by the caruncles (the red, warty growths) on their faces, especially those of the male. I’ve had people joke that they must be a cross between a chicken and a duck! These are what really sets them apart from the regular ducks that we see. While the females’ caruncles, like the one above from my flock, relatively stay like that, the males can have some crazy ones that make people uncomfortable. I think it’s personal preference but I love the way the females look (they come in a lot of different colors too) so I don’t mind them, but if you have your heart set on a Donald duck, muscovies probably aren’t for you.
5. People Watching. This is one of those things that until you get them and have had them for a while, you don’t realize it’s an issue. This wouldn’t be an issue if I had a gate to my deck, but the deck is too large to gate up, so my ducks spend all of their non-foraging time watching people TV–always at the patio door (I have two) that I’m at. Subsequently, they poop on the deck so I have to hose it down every day. Thankfully their poop doesn’t smell, so it’s not a big deal, but I would like it if I could deter them from stalking me like this all the time.
I’ve tried a few things–ultrasonic repellents, chasing them with pool noodles and umbrellas (both of which they’re terrified of), fake owl statue, not coming out of these doors to feed them. Nothing works for longer than 3 days. Much of it has to do with their strong flocking instinct, and I was apparently voted alpha. This is one of those things you’d have to be aware of if you do get them, but some people find it adorable and hilarious. I would too if they didn’t poop on the deck.
6. Difficult to incubate/hatch. I’m not entirely sure why it is, but muscovy eggs have a reputation for being difficult to incubate/hatch. I’ve tried it with varying results. Mostly commonly, the ducklings make it to pip but no further and die in shell. I’m hoping as I continue to try and tweak my methods, I’ll figure out how to improve the hatch rate. Update: While I never did figure out why my ducklings were dying at pip, I created a method that greatly improved the hatch rate of those that make it to the end. It’s a hands on method but I didn’t lose the last two clutches that I tried with this.
7. Ducks cannot be mixed with chickens. Unfortunately, the ducks and chickens are different anatomically, essentially in that drakes have a penis and roosters don’t, therefore chickens have been known to be injured or killed when a male duck attempts to mate with them. Drakes have also been known to drag chickens into the water to mate, which is normal for them, but often drown the poor chicken in question. They also produce a lot more moisture, which means the chickens can develop bumble or get ill or frostbitten more easily.
Pictures of the ducks in question…
I hope you enjoyed this list! If you are serious about raising them, come and take a look at my Muscovy Care Sheet
I’m having trouble getting a Muscovy to eat. You mentioned pellets. What pellets do you feed them. I’m desperate.
I have several dozen muscovies in southern Ohio. They never took to pellets, even Purina duck chow, which can be ordered from your local feed store. Mine prefer chicken scratch. A 50 lb bag will set you back $10 at any farm supply store. Make sure the have plenty of water if you dont have a pond nearby. Mine are also big into dried mealworms, which can be found at Tractor Supply or similar store, or ordered off Amazon. They are a great treat on top of the scratch.
I like the pellets since there’s less food waste, but otherwise that’s definitely a personal preference!
Hi!! I’m looking to introduce ducks to my garden, and I’m having trouble reconciling what I so often see, which is that duck poop is great put directly into the garden (which sounds great to me!) and the flip side which is that duck poop has disease and bacteria on it that should be avoided at all costs! Why should I not worry about duck poop on my food?? I really want to not worry…but it has been hard to find an answer to this question online! Thanks so much!
Hey there! Sometimes I hear it matters for root crops, but I don’t pay attention to that… I think it’s important to remember that things like deer, raccoons, cats (oh god, especially cats) are going to be pooping in your food garden too, without you even knowing it! Long as you’re not piling it on where the actual fruits/veggies touch it, there should be no more issue than the other wild animals that make our garden their bathroom. Hope this helps!
Make sure it’s non medicated, (ducks can be poisoned by this as they eat a lot more than chickens, chicks especially) and also to supplement with Niacin. It’s not in chicken food, and ducks/Muscovies need it.
Do Muscovy duck fly away during the end of February or early March in Chesapeake VA?? .
Not that I know of. They may travel short distances but they’re not normally migrating ducks.
I just got a pair of Muscovies, male and female and it has been the third day and I walked out to see the pen had been opened at the top and my hen was missing. I didn’t see any feathers or signs of struggle. I wondered if she had climbed up and just was heavy enough to open it and get out. Will she come back? I don’t see her anywhere around the property.
I’m so sorry, it’s likely an animal got in and took her. Raccoons will drag them out of the pen without any signs…
Muscovy ducks are escape artists. The females being smaller, climb and fly better that the mature males. Having said that, It’s not unusual to see the big males flying through the trees and brush about 20 feet off the ground. The females will fly up onto power lines and will sit high, really high, in tall trees. It’ s also not unusual for a few of ours to leave for days and weeks at a time. Our daughter caught 5 of hers in a cage, covered the cage, put it in the back of an Excursion, drove them 12 miles to a lake, turned them loose, and 2 months later 2 of the 5 came walking up her driveway. Unless you see a whole lot of feathers I wouldn’t worry about her welfare. You have to consider she may have found a place she likes better. That happened to 2 of ours–they joined up with a neighbor’s chickens for a few months. When we got more Muscovies 8 months later, they came back. They’re so fickle. LOL As for raccoons, we have a lot of them here. The generally kill a duck by grabbing it’s neck so there won’t be a lot of feathers. Still, look around for the few. Also, It’s pretty hard for a raccoon to eat on a Muscovy without it loosing a lot of feathers. Look around your property for any signs of more foul fowl play.