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samooholmes
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Ducks for pesticide substitute!
Hey hey new to this forum here:) I recently saw a farmer using DUCKS, tonnes upon tonnes of ducks, all waddling over their produce daily in order to eat up any worms or critters that may be causing disruption. I thought this was an absolutely fascinating approach to things and wanted to see if this is more common than I realised?? If it is, would you recommend? I can't imagine keeping ducks is too difficult I thought and the daily waddles certainly makes for a show haha
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applestar
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- Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)
Just a quick reply for now — I briefly looked into this a good while ago. Couple of key points if I remember correctly are — (1) You have to get the right kind of sucks for this (2) They will still eat or trample small seedlings so they can only be released into enclosed garden space with mature or past the damageable size crops.
There used to be a member here that kept ducks. (Not specifically for their purpose though)
I haven’t checked but maybe his posts are archived and will turn up if you search?
There used to be a member here that kept ducks. (Not specifically for their purpose though)
I haven’t checked but maybe his posts are archived and will turn up if you search?
I haven't had ducks but, for a good number of years, I had a backyard flocks of laying hens. However, the vegetable garden was a good distance from the coop and I was able to allow them a few hours of foraging without them ever moving into it. I felt fortunate in that regard but don't know about how ducks would be different in their plant consumption. Geese, as I understand it, are primarily plant eaters.
Of the birds in the garden, I think house sparrows do a fairly good job of cleaning the aphids out every year. I even try to get the plant starts out of the greenhouse as early as I can for hardening off if there are many aphids showing up on them. The sparrows do a good job there also. However, if there are an abundance of sparrows because of neighbors feeding them, they will look to my garden vegetables as their source of plant food through the Summer. They have devastated the lettuce, some years.
If one was to use ducks for pest control, I would hope that it was immediately before running sprinklers on the vegetables. I'm sure duck manure is a suitable fertilizer but I wouldn't want to harvest it on the produce.
Steve
Of the birds in the garden, I think house sparrows do a fairly good job of cleaning the aphids out every year. I even try to get the plant starts out of the greenhouse as early as I can for hardening off if there are many aphids showing up on them. The sparrows do a good job there also. However, if there are an abundance of sparrows because of neighbors feeding them, they will look to my garden vegetables as their source of plant food through the Summer. They have devastated the lettuce, some years.
If one was to use ducks for pest control, I would hope that it was immediately before running sprinklers on the vegetables. I'm sure duck manure is a suitable fertilizer but I wouldn't want to harvest it on the produce.
Steve