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| Reply #: 1 Posted on: 04-09-13 11:14 PM |
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For experienced hands, wood ducks are fairly easy to raise, but for beginners it would be challenging. If you are planning to start with ducklings after hatching eggs, then you may see that ducklings would die at 5-6 days of age and this is quite common with beginners. Ducklings dying would be because they don't eat well or didn't like the way the food was presented. Mazuri Waterfowl Starter is the most recommended food for these wood ducklings. Place it in small containers with water so that mazuri will float. When you incubate eggs, keep 2-3 call duck eggs in the same batch. These wood and call duck eggs hatch out nearly at the same time. When they hatch out, call ducklings will eat fast. Seeing this, the wood ducklings will learn to eat soon.
As juveniles, they eat a lot of invertebrates and occasionally a small fish. As they near maturity, plants (watermeal, duckweed, wild rice, pondweeds, smartweeds) make up to 80% of a Wood Duck’s diet. Wood Ducks also feed on seeds (especially watershield), nuts, aquatic insects, and other land invertebrates (snails, clams). Adult Wood Ducks feed on acorns during fall and winter, searching for them in flooded swamps, bottomlands, and oak forests.
Wood Ducks prefer areas that have a mix of water habitats and forests. Waters with woody debris (logs, stumps, standing trees) and green vegetation is the best place for wood ducks. Adult wood ducks use the woody debris for loafing and the vegetation provides both cover and food resources.
They are strong fliers and can reach speeds of 30 mph. Flight is usually not much higher than the treetops. Wood Ducks nests in cavities inside trees. If at your place, natural cavities for nesting are scarce, you can provide them nest boxes. The location of your boxes is important for your success in raising ducks year after year. Make sure that their flight path to your box in not hindered. You may remove branches to ensure visibility.
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