Duck

A small, domesticated waterfowl, Ducks are not found in the wild, and can only be purchased from traders or received in self-taming events. Like chickens, ducks mature quickly and lay eggs often, making them both good meal birds and sources of eggs. Males of the species can be distinguished by their green heads and two-tone body while females have a solid colour head and body with darker wings.

Summary

Ducks are pen animals. Once tamed, pen animals cannot and do not need to be trained any further. But if left outside of a pen or caravan hitching spot, pen animals will eventually roam outside your colony. Making a caravan is not required to tie animals to a caravan hitching spot.

A female duck produces 1 egg every 1 day. Ducks can lay both unfertilized and fertilized eggs, depending on if it has mated with a male.

Analysis

Ducks are the second best animal for egg production, and one of the best overall animals for meat production. Ducks reproduce rapidly.

Ducks are nearly identical to chickens, providing the same yields in both meat and eggs. However, ducks consume 20% more nutrition, meaning that chickens are better livestock. If chickens are not available but ducks are, then ducks can be a suitable replacement.

Eggs

An adult duck consumes 0.28 nutrition per day, and produces 0.25 nutrition of eggs each day. This results in a nutrition efficiency of 89.3% when unfertilized eggs are eaten. Overeating, and the existence of males, will lower nutrition efficiency in practice.

Note that slaughtering ducklings gives more nutrition than eating unhatched eggs (0.6 from meat rather than 0.25 from 1 egg). However, a handler has to actually slaughter each duck, and a butcher's yields are multiplied by Butchery Efficiency. So if you don't a skilled cook, eggs may be better for nutrition. Also, eggs are vegetarian.

Meat

When slaughtered, a duck yields 12 meat as a duckling; 26 as a juvenile; or 42 as an adult. No leather is yielded.

When ducklings are slaughtered, an always-fertilized female duck produces 0.6 nutrition per day, resulting in a nutrition efficiency of 214.3% when not considering males, or 142.9% when accounting for the 2:1 hen:rooster ratio needed to achieve a good fertilization rate.

As a duck grows into adulthood, it will consume 1.81 nutrition in total, and will yield 1.5 more nutrition when slaughtered than it would as a baby. Therefore, it is better to slaughter ducks as soon as they hatch from an egg.

When slaughtered as ducklings, ducks are better than almost all animals in terms of theoretical meat : food consumption ratio, below chickens and tortoises. Due to the effect of overeating, and the amount of slaughtering required with ducks, players may prefer to ranch horses or ibex instead.

Feeding

A duck consumes 0.28 nutrition per day, or roughly 6 hay.

The following is a list of how many tiles of haygrass it takes to sustain a mature duck.

Gravel: 5.25
Soil: 4.31
Rich Soil: 3.47

Therefore, when slaughtered as juveniles, ducks have a nutrition efficiency (nutrition out for nutrition in) of 28.1%. This makes them the 10th most efficient animal to farm for meat; more efficient than capybaras, but less efficient than pigs and wild boars.

Training

This animal can be trained as follows:

Guard:
Attack:
Rescue:
Haul:

*As of version 1.1.2610, all animals can be tamed. The percentage of likelihood of success depends on factors such as the Animals Wildness Percentage, Pawn Handling Skill, and others. More information can be found on the animals page.

Health

Body part	Health
Head	9
Skull	9
Brain	4
Nose	4
Neck	9
Jaw	7
Eye ^[1] (left, right)	4
Ear (left, right)	4
Body	14
Kidney^[2] (left, right)	5
Lung^[2] (left, right)	5
Liver^[2]	7
Heart^[2]	5
Spine^[2]	9
Stomach^[2]	7
Limbs (left, right, fore, hind)	11
Appendage (left, right, fore, hind)	7

↑ Located inside of Head.
↑ ^2.0 ^2.1 ^2.2 ^2.3 ^2.4 ^2.5 Located inside of Body.

Gallery

Male duck facing east
Male duck facing north
Male duck facing south
Duck decaying

Female duck facing east
Female duck facing north
Female duck facing south

Version history

1.1.0 - Added as part of the integration of the Vanilla Animals Expanded - Livestock mod into the base game.
1.3.3066 - Adjusted to be more similar to chicken as a part of a large livestock rebalance

Animals