Muscovy Duck: Best Backyard Duck for an Urban Homesteader

From No More Stomach Acres March 2021

Considering backyard chickens or maybe something different? A backyard duck but worried about the loud quack? Want something that may fit multiple roles?

Homesteads often utilize dual purpose chickens for meat and eggs. I believe the muscovy duck fits that bill, with one key bonus for the urban backyard: little noise!!

**Disclaimer, do check with local ordinances. We have had our own lessons learned and thankfully have since moved out of the city!**

Noise!

That’s right! These ducks do not quack!

The loudest noise we generally hear is a pip from the ducks when they get broody and want to sit on a nest. There is no fanfare announcement when an egg is laid and certainly no sound the alarm rooster calls to wake up the neighbors!

We had 4 ducks and a male (drake) in our backyard inside the city for months without the neighbors (who even came over) knowing! They did go broody and one duck hatched a clutch of eggs during that time. I assume the quiet pip sound she made was written off as being from a wild bird!

Naturally Great Mothers

There are certain breeds of chickens that are known for their broodiness. This is sometimes considered a less desired trait because the chicken will stop laying eggs and sit on the nest. In our dual purpose self sufficient mindset, we love this about muscovy ducks. Our past ducks would do this, but we lacked the drake to fertilize the eggs so unfortunately it was a waste of time for them to sit on the nest. Last year, our oldest duck Nebula sat on the clutch of eggs for 35 days and resulted in 9 ducklings hatching, we lost 1 in the first week but the other 8 grew perfectly fine.

How much effort to raise those 8…none!

We have brooded ducklings before (inside our garage) but it always resulted in a mess! Ducklings get water EVERYWHERE! Since our muscovies manage the whole process of raising their own by themselves there was no effort needed from us. We only bought one bag of flock grower feed but they barely touched that. Nebula would not let us near them (she was on guard even for the photo) and she kept her ducklings in the garden most days where they were getting all the nutrition they needed.

Dual Purpose!

Those 8 ducklings grew into 3 ducks and 5 drakes! We kept the ducks who are now happily providing us eggs. The 5 drakes have provided our family with amazingly healthy and delicious food that was raised just out our back door.

An important note, all of this occurred during the initial pandemic lockdown and while grocery store supply chains were being strained. This event may be why you are now researching more homesteading options and welcome to the club! We are constantly learning too!

The eggs are delicious! But by allowing them to hatch a clutch we were able to naturally increase the flock for more eggs next year and supplement our rabbit meat we already were raising. (Stay tuned for a post on rabbits!)

Bug control!

Muscovies love bugs, particularly mosquitos! This works well because a reduced mosquito load makes the backyard more enjoyable. Muscovies also greatly enjoy eating greens from the yard…or even the garden! Our garden did make it past the initial sprout stage and produced well even though the birds had access to it. We had no bug pest problem on any of the plants last year which was amazing! They will also enjoy most fruit and vegetable table scraps!

This equates to an amazing thing! Reduced feed bill! 2 of our ducks recently avoided the run (food and all) on our new acreage, they free ranged for everything till we brought them back into the flock. More on that later!

Water!

All ducks need to be able to submerge their bills when eating, and that will always result in a messy water area. I am still testing ideas to solve that age old problem!

Swim time though is not as much of a problem for muscovies. They do not require the water to swim in for breeding (other ducks need that to offset the weight and not hurt the ducks)! Don’t get me wrong, they will love to play in the kiddie pool if available but will spend less time in it than other breeds. We will generally fill the pool on hot days, or allow it to fill up during a good rain, but much less constant than when we had other ducks.

The grass is not always greener on the other side

There are a couple downsides to this breed of duck that I have to mention:

Reduced egg production

These birds will lay in the low 100s for eggs each year. Not much when you look at numbers for production chickens or even some dual purpose chicken breeds. We even had production breed ducks at one point but they were extremely noisy!

Egg hunt

We used the broodiness to our advantage; however, they will try to hide eggs to make a clutch. Be ready for an easter egg hunt anywhere in the yard they have access to. If you do not have a male (drake) then the duck will sit on the eggs for no reason which we find sad. We first experienced this with our Blue Swedish duck who hid her clutch under the coop for 2 weeks! The muscovies subsequently tried to use the same indention in the ground which we learned to regularly check!

They can fly!

We lost one of our ducks because she just flew off…she took off from the fence so “flew the coop” or “ran away” is not very accurate but we miss her! This leads to us having to clip their wings if we want to keep them close. Completely harmless but it must be done at least once a year, maybe twice depending on how much of a rebel your birds are. For those with more land, it’s not always necessary to clip them (if they know where their food is, they’ll come back) but we still choose to clip our birds’ wings to be able to protect them. We weren’t going to clip them when we moved because they just take a few joy flights and then come home, but one day we lost our drake because he flew into a neighboring field and something got him. Also, the ducks had found the neighbors roof…

This runs into my final hard lesson learned, catching them!

Claws and Evasive

They can perch with the long claws on their webbed feet! I recommend leather gloves and long sleeves when handling them and clipping wings…have been on the receiving end and they can draw blood.

I have tried to devise many ways of catching them for clipping the wings. The easiest is getting them locked in a coop at night. When in the open, a large net… we have had mixed results. If yours like you and come to you, all the better! Ours keep their distance!

These are the reasons our family has fallen in love with the muscovy duck. Our flock of 7 moved with us and were the first poultry established on our new homestead! They are now actively working on expanding the flock with 1 sitting on a mixed nest of goose and muscovy eggs!