Changing duck water frequency suggestions?

[nao57]

Well I thought I was doing good with ducks. But this year their egg production sucks. There's been a lot of smoke from California fires hitting us. Many days we can't even see our mountains. So this had made me think the smoke was mostly responsible. It also wasn't easy to deal with this because we're under water restrictions.

But I could be wrong about that. And when the smoke let up they didn't start producing again. *Although I'm not sure how long it takes them to recover from the smoke?*

I also have to consider maybe I could be wrong also about how often to change the duck's bucket of water? I'd like to hear your thoughts and suggests on this. And its not easy to tell also because the ducks themselves make it look terrible within hours of putting it down. (Using 5 gallon buckets.) I'm willing to go back to basics and humble myself to go over things. It doesn't really matter what I think, but what matters is getting results. Some people say their chicken egg production didn't drop much (shrug? I don't understand it.)

How often do you suggest changing a bucket of water for duck drinking etc? (5 gallon buckets.) Do you change it every single day? Or is it enough to change it once every 2 or 3 days, with having more than one bucket out?

 

[sourland]

I'd change at least daily to keep bacterial growth at a minimum.

 

[HollowOfWisps]

I use (4) 2 gallon buckets with my hens and (2) 2 gallon buckets in with my drakes (not including their pools). All buckets get dumped and re-filled with clean water 3-4x a day in the summer and 2-3x a day in the winter. Dirty water is still dirty water and it needs to be dumped and re-filled daily at the very least for buckets. Pools sometimes you can get away with dumping every couple of days, but even then I dump mine daily and refill them.
As far as egg production goes have you also taken into account outdoor temperatures (hot weather can cause them to lay less), nutrition and the size of your duck area (hiding eggs)?

 

[Quatie]

The egg production could also just be down because the smoke decreased the amount of sun the ducks were getting. For a while, I it was hard to remember what a blue sky looked like. Who knows what other bad effects the smoke had.

My egg production has been a bit lower than expected. But I know my dogs ate some eggs laid out of the coop.

 

[CoriM]

I change two gallon waterers several times a day, plus a little pond in their run every day or two.

 

[Isadora]

I dump and change out my duck water twice a day. Even the bucket that they can't physically get into swim in gets really nasty just from their muddy bills getting washed in there.

 

[Crazy Maizie]

I change out water twice a day. In the hotter days of summer more like 3 or 4 times.
The swimming water I will change every 3-4 days depending in the weather as well - hotter temps every other day. I couldn't imagine having ducks with water restrictions though. Anyway to filter and reuse?