If you are hoping to take advantage of the nutritional benefits duck eggs can provide, then maintaining a small flock on your property can be beneficial. Creating the right environment for your ducks will make them more likely to lay eggs regularly.
Here are three tips that you can use when landscaping your home's garden area to make it more duck-friendly in the future.
1. Use high-traffic grass seeds.
Ducks enjoy eating grass, and they also enjoy digging small holes in grass to search for bugs, worms, and other nutritional edibles. To ensure that your garden's grass stays looking nice, it's important that you select a grass variety that can withstand high-traffic for planting.
If you live in an area where cool temperatures are common, you might want to plant ryegrass. This variety germinates quickly, and can withstand the amount of wear your small flock will inevitably place upon it. A great high-traffic grass to plant if you live in a warmer region is a hardy St, Augustine variety.
2. Plant some Indian Hawthorn bushes.
Finding shrubs that will be both aesthetically pleasing and remain intact when you have a small flock of ducks in your garden can be a challenge. Ducks will typically eat any leaves they can reach off of small shrubs, or simply strip the leaves and spread them on the ground if they don't like the taste of the plant.
Fortunately, most ducks tend to leave shrubs in the fir family alone. Planting some Indian Hawthorn bushes (which are evergreen shrubs that flower each year) is suggested when trying to landscape your duck garden. There are many varieties of Indian Hawthorn to choose from, making this fir an excellent landscaping option.
3. Incorporate ornamental grasses into your garden's design.
In the wild, ducks attempt to hide their nests to keep eggs and young hatchlings safe from the prying eyes of predators. You can encourage your backyard ducks to lay more eggs by providing them with an ideal nesting habitat.
Ornamental grasses (like Appalachian sedge, which grows to about 12 inches in height) can provide the shade and privacy that nesting ducks enjoy. By including ornamental grasses in your garden's landscape design, you will be able to make your backyard flock feel more comfortable laying eggs in the future.
Landscaping with your ducks in mind can be a great way to help you create a visually pleasing landscape design that benefits both you and your backyard flock.
