We Released the Mandarin Ducks in the Aviary

In 2019 we hatched out our first six mandarin ducklings from eggs we bought on eBay. We raised them for years in a chicken tractor, changing out their water bowl day after day after day. Then we started to build the aviary for our peafowl, pheasants, and mandarins, but it has taken us five years to complete. Last year we got the help of Aquascape and some local pond building companies to build us a natural pond just for our mandarins. Now today, right at the end of 2024, we're ready to move the mandarins into the aviary with their very own pond. All right, Becky, the big moment. Okay. Are you excited? Yes. All right, last time changing out the duck water. All right, tomorrow. So today is a really exciting day. Obviously we just moved the pheasants and the peafowl into the aviary, but that is nothing like the excitement we've got in store for us and for you. You ready to get the mandarin ducks? Yeah. Okay, excited to see the mandarin ducks in the pond? Yeah. Yeah, this water right here. We've changed this water out every day since we hatched them out in the summer of 2018, and I wouldn't recommend getting eggs. We'll talk about that a little bit throughout this. Actually hatched out our first six. We've gotten another through a trade, and then we ended up buying our white pair. We bought them and had them shipped to us. So they range in age from about three years old to about six years old. But this water, we've been replacing this every day since we got them, which is about 2,300 days ago. And so after today, we will have to replace that no more. We've got a couple of these cages. I'll start collecting these guys, and then we're going to move them out to the aviary. We love having these mandarins. They've got some really gorgeous coloring, and then especially this feather here in the back that pokes up looks so gorgeous. And then here's one of the females. You can see the females are, I think they look a lot like wood ducks as well, which they're relatives of, but they have more generic brown colors and none of the coloring that the males have. Male number two. There's female number two. She's got one of the leg bands, so we traded for her. There's female number three. Male number three. This is one of our few that has a name. This is air male. Had them shipped in and they barely made it here in time. You can tell the white ones with their gold look are just gorgeous. Can't wait to see him on the pond. And then here's our white female. Her name is Salt. And then just as we were getting ready to release the mandarins, we found another bird stuck in the netting. Oh my gosh, what happened? It's a hawk. I think it's a hawk. It got stuck in the net and just wrapped himself in. His foot's all wrapped up in the fence. I think he's dead. I got zip ties in there. I'll have to go out there and try to pull him off. So first week of having our birds in the aviary, it's like we had a hawk that tried to get to him, got caught up in the net. Thankfully the netting did what it's supposed to do. Let's keep the predators out. So it's an owl, still alive. We're going to try to detangle his legs so we can get it free and let him go. Careful, he might try to bite you. He just did. Okay, I got control of his head. Now how do we untwist this? Oh my gosh, he's clenching down. There he goes. Wow, that was something else. Now we got to fix our fence a little bit. A couple little tears. Not bad, it couldn't rip through it. Got his foot in there and just spun around and got all tangled up. So okay, I hope that doesn't help again. Hopefully he learned his lesson. Hope we don't have to deal with him in the net again. That was pretty scary. He kind of clenched down on my finger with one of the talons. That was a strong grip. I don't know, I think it might have pierced me with it. Well, that was pretty exciting. But now we've got the main event. We've got the manor and ducks here to put into the pond. We built this pond with Aquascape and a bunch of crews that are affiliated with Aquascape last September. They spent about a week here excavating this out, putting in the liners, putting in the rocks and all the boulders, and then we filled it up with water. And then now a year later, all the cables are up, the netting's up, and now we're ready to move the manor and ducks in. Now, we've had a lot of people that wonder, is this pond going to be able to handle all of their poop because ducks are dirty? And that's what we're going to find out. There are a number of things to help keep this pond clean. So under here, we've got two types of some, this is clear, this is maintained. So those are beneficial bacterias that are constantly fed into the pond. It's safe for the fish and for the birds. We've got ionization happening back here with some copper. And then up here at the very top of the pond, all the water gets pumped up to two different spots. When it goes to the top waterfall over here in another spot, it comes in underneath, it comes through the centipede and the snorkel. And this is the wetland filter. The muck and stuff stays in the bottom and gets cleaned on the way up to the top. Snorkel and centipede, that's what's going to have to be cleaned out once a year. But this is going to be a million times better than what we had planned. We had a big bean-shaped dugout, and then we had a pipe that we were running down the hill that we could open up and just drain it out. And so our plan was just to drain it out every three, four weeks and then refill it. But it would have taken about a week to fill it up every time. So hopefully this works great for the ducks. All right, Becky, the big moment. Okay. Are you excited? Yes. All right, here we go. So the first one went in and swam across, got out, and now just flew around to the other side. These are way more flighty birds. I thought the fence would be the same way, but it'll just all fly away. Ready? I'm ready. In that small door? Yeah. Oh gosh. Immediately got stuck up in the fence. And that's high up. It's just got its foot through, it's not even twisted. It just needs to be knocked down. There you go. Hang on. So they all end up flying. Some of them went into the water for a few seconds and then jumped out and they're flying and they're learning about the net pretty quick. Yeah, this flew right through the peacocks. Come along. Hey. Hey. So we got our mandarin duck here, we've got red-willed and pheasant, two of our peacocks, a couple more mandarins up here. Now we're hoping they'll make their way back to the pond. They won't have to worry, they're going to keep flying right into the net. Once they get into the pond, they'll realize that's where they can be free and safe from the peafowl. Well, that definitely didn't go as planned. Not a big deal. It was just first day, but it gave us a chance to see that they're going to fly to the other fence. And so we went all around and did a lot more zip ties just to make sure it's real nice and tight, that they can't get out through any of the edges. So if you remember our duck houses before, the mandarin houses, this is what we used to use right here. Pretty simple idea. You can make it out of one long board. I think it was like a 10 foot board of one by 12. Duck would go in the hole here, sit down in the wood chips, lay their eggs, and then they would all come out. The mother and the babies would all jump out. So we've got a new duck house that I want to show you that somebody sent us. We've got down the aviary. We're here by the outer gate. Come on guys, go to the pond. So I've got these boxes up here. So I got these sweet duck houses. These are wood duck houses, but they'll work for mandarins just great. Very similar type idea. We got these from Andrew at Sneaky Fox Outdoors. Contacted me and he sent me a couple of them and I ended up buying a couple more myself. Great price. So you can pop off the top to be able to reach in there, put in some wood chips and be able to check out the eggs. Screws right on down. That's super simple. I was going to spend a couple hundred dollars on some really nice boxes and these are super affordable and they are never going to break down to weather. And then there's a spot right back here so we can put in some posts in the ground or we could attach them to some of our bigger posts and I could just screw them right onto that from the top. So let's put some posts in the ground and we'll hang our four mandarin boxes. We're going to go feed the ducks. Watch this. Now pour it so they can see it. See, look, look, they see it. Alright, so we're working on four posts here. We've got one we're going to put up here above the pond. Becky and Eli just dug out a post right here. I think I'll put one right down over there. Alright, how's this one coming? It's so muddy. It's clumping. Can't get the dirt off of it. So we've got to watch putting it too close to the pond. We have the pond tarp comes right up to the edge of everything so we don't want to put it like hanging right over the pond and tear into that pond tarp. And then there is a little bit of electrical that's running the pumps. It's coming along this side so we've got to be careful hitting that. First box is all done, secured, got wood chips in it. So she'll go in there, lay her eggs, and then we'll get to watch her hatch them out here in the aviary. It's gonna be exciting this year. Just about done with our third one here. You see all the birds in here? Yes. What birds do you see? Mandarin ducks, pheasants, and peacocks. What's your favorite, Bella? Kitties. We've got one here towards the end of the pond. We've got one and two right here kind of in the middle of the pond. Hopefully they'll work for them. And then up here at the top we've got another one on one of the big poles. So Andrew at Sneaky Fox Outdoors, thank you so much for working with us on these boxes. You can check out a link to their website down in our description. Well, we got it done. A couple days before the new year, I set a goal to finish the aviary, get the birds in, and we did it. Now, it's not perfect. We've got a lot of things left to do in here. Trees to plant, a lot of landscaping. We're really excited about the next phase for the aviary, but I'm so glad to see all the birds in here. The mandarin's getting long. Starting to use the pond, it's just, it's a beautiful thing. And I know I alluded to at the beginning of the video of how to get mandarin ducks, and I talked about hatching out some eggs that we got off eBay, and I don't really recommend that anymore. We got pretty lucky with the way we did it. Eggs have gone up exponentially. For the cost of six eggs, you can really get a pair of mandarin ducks, and then you can get unlimited ducklings from them. So, I would really suggest getting a pair rather than getting eggs. We have a really hard time hatching mandarin eggs in the incubator. When the ducks do it, they do an amazing job, but they're just so fragile. So, I really suggest getting a pair, letting them hatch out eggs whenever possible. Now, for us in this aviary, we want to know what's the next thing that you want to see in here. What birds? What animals? We've thought about tortoises to eat the grass. We've thought about other waterfowl that can go in this pond with the mandarins. What other animals? What other birds would you love to see in here? I'd love to hear about it. Thank you guys for all your support, for watching. We'll see you guys next year.