Duckling Age Planner: What Your Ducklings Need This Week

The first eight weeks of a duckling’s life are a sequence of changes — the temperature comes down, the water gets deeper, the feed changes, the space doubles — and the changes are tied to age, not to how the ducklings look. Put in the hatch date and this shows you what applies today, from the published figures, with the dates each change falls on.

Key takeaways

• Two published brooder schedules exist and they disagree by several degrees in week one. Both are shown; the ducklings’ behaviour is the tie-breaker.
• Water must be deep enough to dunk the whole head from day one — 4.5 cm — and at least 10 cm from three weeks (RSPCA).
• No swimming in the first three weeks (eXtension). Ducklings in down chill easily when wet (Minnesota Extension), and the RSPCA says young ducklings’ feathers are not fully oiled or waterproofed; that a mother’s preen oil waterproofs them is unproven.
• Starter feed for two weeks, then grower; for a laying flock, layer feed about a month before the first egg (NC State, Minnesota Extension) or once they start mating and laying (Metzer Farms).
• Space goes from 1 sq ft each to 3, 3.5 and 4 as they grow — Metzer’s brackets.

The brooder temperature argument

This is the figure people search for, and it has two answers. eXtension, following Ohio 4-H, says start at 90–95 °F in the first week and drop five degrees a week until the ducklings are three to four weeks old or the room is at 70 °F. Cornell’s Duck Research Laboratory broods much cooler from the start — 86 °F on day one, 81 °F at a week, 73 °F at two weeks, down to 55 °F at five weeks.

They do not converge, and that is not a mistake in either. eXtension stops describing temperature once the supplementary heat comes off; Cornell keeps describing what feathering ducklings will tolerate. The planner prints both for the current week, and the full table underneath, and the only sensible instruction is the one Cornell and every experienced keeper give: watch the birds. Huddled under the lamp means cold. Spread to the far corners, panting, means too hot. Scattered comfortably across the brooder means right.

Water

The RSPCA’s welfare standards give the depth for farmed ducks: 4.5 cm from day one, at least 10 cm from three weeks. A duck cleans its eyes and nostrils by submerging its whole head, and a duckling that cannot do that develops eye and nostril trouble. The depth is a welfare requirement, not a nicety.

Deep enough to dunk the head is not the same as deep enough to swim in, and in the first weeks the two must be kept apart. eXtension says no swimming in the first three weeks; the RSPCA gives full-body water access from 21 days. Ducklings in down chill easily when they get wet (Minnesota Extension), and the RSPCA says more water may not suit young ducklings because their feathers are not fully oiled or waterproofed, which leaves them more at risk of thermal stress and drowning. That a mother waterproofs her ducklings with her preen oil is unproven: Elder (1954), who tested it, wrote that “The basic question remains unanswered”, and found the oil gland of incubator-hatched redhead, canvasback and mallard ducklings “functional in the first day of life”. Stones in the water dish so they can drink and dunk without climbing in is the standard answer. The whole subject — why ducks are waterproof, and what is and is not known about ducklings — is in why ducks don’t get wet.

Metzer publishes how much a Pekin duckling drinks: 0.23 litres a day in week one, 0.68 in week four, 1.51 in week seven. The weeks in between are not published and the planner leaves them blank rather than draw a line through three points.

Feed and protein

Starter for the first two weeks, grower from week three. Metzer’s minimums are 22–22.5% protein for starter and 17.5–19% for grower; eXtension’s table gives 20% and 16%. Either works; what does not work is chick starter without added niacin. Metzer specifies at least 55 mg of niacin per kg of feed and NC State gives the same figure as 25 mg per pound. Ducklings short of it may at first be reluctant to move about; in time their hocks swell and their legs bow, and Metzer Farms says problems show within several days. What to feed ducks covers the brands and the brewer’s-yeast workaround.

The planner shows the daily feed for the current week from Metzer’s table; the feed calculator does the flock arithmetic.

Space

Metzer’s brackets: 1 sq ft per duckling to three weeks, 3 sq ft from four to eight, 3.5 from nine to seventeen, 4 from eighteen weeks — with a minimum total for any group, so three ducklings still get 5 sq ft, not 3. The planner shows the bracket that applies today and the date the next one starts. For the adult house and run, the housing and space calculator gives the recommended and welfare-minimum figures side by side.

The milestones

Under the current figures the planner lists the milestones with dates: the switch to grower at week three, heat off at three to four weeks on eXtension’s schedule, the first sign of the sexes at six to ten weeks (the sources disagree on the age — the sexing tool explains), and the adult space bracket at eighteen weeks. Each is marked done, this week, or ahead.

Two things are deliberately not on it. There is no “ducklings can go outside” date, because it depends on your weather and not on the calendar — fully feathered and the nights above the last brooder temperature is the usual rule. And there is no point-of-lay date, because it depends on breed and on the light; when ducks start laying has what is known.

Where this fits

This planner is the day-by-day companion to raising ducklings week by week, which is the narrative version, and to the hatch date calculator, which gets you to day zero — and, if the eggs are still in the incubator, the weight-loss tracker is the humidity check that gets them there. Once they are outside, the predator tool is the page you hope never to need. If the ducklings came from your own broody, the broody duck guide covers what she does for them that you do not have to.