I'm just throwing this out there as a topic because I wanted to get some thoughts from anyone who may have seen this problem with any of their ducklings this year.
In birthing of horses, neonate foals often retain meconium (first bowel movements and accumulated waste in the intestine) and have to be given enemas. The wise breeder will often have one or two Fleet enemas available to administer to the foal to avoid impaction and/or straining and subsequent colic. I'm not sure if "retained meconium" is what people who farm ducks would call it, but I can tell you I have had one duckling so far this season who was impacted. We did get him cleared up.
The question is, what techniques do people use? Here, we added some organic apple cider vinegar to the drinking water and I ran the duckling's vent under a warm trickle of water several times while gently working the hard waste out and lightly stroking his belly. We also put him in a warm sink of water and kept him moving for about 10 minutes at a time to get his legs pumping and his digestive tract moving. This took a couple of days to get him clear; belly was impacted enough to start to swell and he was in obvious distress from being so uncomfortable, peeping and panting a lot, but he is now fine...there was a lot of hard fecal matter to get out, though. Someone suggested to me taking a (tiny!) bit of Dawn dishsoap with a syringe and warm water and trying to give him an enema, but we never tried that...I have no idea what size of syringe you could even attempt this with on a Call duckling. We didn't try that method and the less invasive measures worked...he is now growing like a weed and is almost three weeks old, where he wasn't growing at all until we got this issue resolved.
Anyone want to share their experiences with this problem?
In birthing of horses, neonate foals often retain meconium (first bowel movements and accumulated waste in the intestine) and have to be given enemas. The wise breeder will often have one or two Fleet enemas available to administer to the foal to avoid impaction and/or straining and subsequent colic. I'm not sure if "retained meconium" is what people who farm ducks would call it, but I can tell you I have had one duckling so far this season who was impacted. We did get him cleared up.
The question is, what techniques do people use? Here, we added some organic apple cider vinegar to the drinking water and I ran the duckling's vent under a warm trickle of water several times while gently working the hard waste out and lightly stroking his belly. We also put him in a warm sink of water and kept him moving for about 10 minutes at a time to get his legs pumping and his digestive tract moving. This took a couple of days to get him clear; belly was impacted enough to start to swell and he was in obvious distress from being so uncomfortable, peeping and panting a lot, but he is now fine...there was a lot of hard fecal matter to get out, though. Someone suggested to me taking a (tiny!) bit of Dawn dishsoap with a syringe and warm water and trying to give him an enema, but we never tried that...I have no idea what size of syringe you could even attempt this with on a Call duckling. We didn't try that method and the less invasive measures worked...he is now growing like a weed and is almost three weeks old, where he wasn't growing at all until we got this issue resolved.
Anyone want to share their experiences with this problem?
