I have 2 female khaki campbell ducks (9ish months) . I have attached pictures of their enclosure it's about 30ft long and 10ft wide.
I live in Michigan so our winters tend to get pretty chilly this week we are expecting the temps to drop into single digits. Most winters we will spend a good amount of time in negative numbers with a pretty rough winds.
I have read through most of the forums on here and haven't really gotten an answer to my question yet. Being that I live in area with ALOT of coyotes and fox we do lock our ducks into a house at night to keep them safe. We have put straw around their night time house since it is not insulated in hopes it will keep the wind to a minimum it also has about 6inches of pine bedding inside that we fluff once a day. In their night time house we keep food and water with pretty good success. We also have a daytime house which is filled with straw and a second bucket of food with their water outside.They have started to spend a fair amount of time in the daytime house since the temperature has dropped below freezing. So far it seems like this works pretty well and they seem happy except in the morning when I let them out. They both seem slow and not as talkative as normal and I believe I've seen a bit of shivering which makes me think that because there are only two of them they are not creating enough body heat to keep themselves warm. They also spend alot of time just laying around with their heads tucked under their wing. Although I know in the colder months egg production does tend to go down or stop both my girls are still laying one to two eggs everyday.
My debate is do I heat their house a little. I was considering a wall mounted panel that doesn't get super warm just enough to give them an artificial flock to cuddle with. Or do I not heat it And assume that because ducks are hearty little buggers that they will be just fine.
I live in Michigan so our winters tend to get pretty chilly this week we are expecting the temps to drop into single digits. Most winters we will spend a good amount of time in negative numbers with a pretty rough winds.
I have read through most of the forums on here and haven't really gotten an answer to my question yet. Being that I live in area with ALOT of coyotes and fox we do lock our ducks into a house at night to keep them safe. We have put straw around their night time house since it is not insulated in hopes it will keep the wind to a minimum it also has about 6inches of pine bedding inside that we fluff once a day. In their night time house we keep food and water with pretty good success. We also have a daytime house which is filled with straw and a second bucket of food with their water outside.They have started to spend a fair amount of time in the daytime house since the temperature has dropped below freezing. So far it seems like this works pretty well and they seem happy except in the morning when I let them out. They both seem slow and not as talkative as normal and I believe I've seen a bit of shivering which makes me think that because there are only two of them they are not creating enough body heat to keep themselves warm. They also spend alot of time just laying around with their heads tucked under their wing. Although I know in the colder months egg production does tend to go down or stop both my girls are still laying one to two eggs everyday.
My debate is do I heat their house a little. I was considering a wall mounted panel that doesn't get super warm just enough to give them an artificial flock to cuddle with. Or do I not heat it And assume that because ducks are hearty little buggers that they will be just fine.