Can ducks be raised without a water pond?

[Sunny Side Up]

I drain & refill my ducks' kiddy pool every 1-2 days. I don't think they're very finicky as to the color/condition of the water, they love to dabble in the funkiest mud puddles in the yard anyway.

Someone here gave me the brilliant idea to install a bulkhead fitting at the bottom of the side of the pool, and attatch a faucet & hose fitting on the outside. So when I want to empty the pool I can turn the faucet and the dirty duck poop soup drains through the hose & far away into the garden bed. You just have to make sure the end of the hose is on a lower elevation than the bottom of the pool in order for it to drain.

Otherwise, you can set up a siphon to do the same thing. Place one end of the hose in a garden bed lower than the bottom of the pool. Put the other end of the hose in the dirty pool water. Take another hose hooked up to a faucet and run fresh water into the siphon hose while it's under the dirty water. Do that for a minute until there is water going through the siphon hose, then remove the fresh-water hose. You should feel the suction from the siphon hose going. It will now drain out your dirty pool water.

I prefer this method because it keeps the duck yard from becoming a swampy muddy mess with dumped pool water. It also saves my back and the plastic pool from the stress of lifting & dumping out the water.

I keep asking on FreeCycle for one of those good heavy-duty Little Tykes type pools, but until then the regular cheapo ones have been doing well.

We love our ducks and are glad to accomodate them!

 

[zatsdeb]

my ducks free range our whole property, but we are fenced in all around and they have access to 3 pastures with holes in the bottom of the fences to pass through.
We had baby ducks hatched out last year, and had them in a small space that was about 10 X 10, they were little, but my gosh the mess!!!!
We finally had to double the space, and still scoop it clean every other day!! they just poop everywhere!
Since then we haven't let them hatch any more out! I am down to just 3 ducks now, 1 kaki and 2 pekin. I usually let them swim 2 times a week when it is not real hot, I dump the water after the second day. during the hot weather I keep it filled up, dumping about every other day, or when ever it gets really bad. usually 4 days is as long as it can go.