Duck Article Brainstorm Session!

[WannaBeHillBilly]

I'd like to write articles about:

• How to keep the duck swimming pool clean - without toppling it over daily and rinse it with a garden hose. More thinking about installing underground pipes, float valve and a solenoid drain valve.
• How to provide and endless amount of drinking water to the ducks and prevent it from freezing
• Spill free duck feeders with large stock
  
• How to scare away airborne predators
• Nestboxes for ducks

If had just the time to do it…

 

[PirateGirl]

I'd like to write articles about:

• How to keep the duck swimming pool clean - without toppling it over daily and rinse it with a garden hose. More thinking about installing underground pipes, float valve and a solenoid drain valve.
• How to provide and endless amount of drinking water to the ducks and prevent it from freezing
• Spill free duck feeders with large stock
  
• How to scare away airborne predators
• Nestboxes for ducks

If had just the time to do it…

These are things I think about regularly, but don't have great answers for! Ducks and mess and ducks and water are the endless problems. There's got to be an easier way to deal with both. I feel everyone has their own techniques, but I don't feel like I could leave my ducks for a week alone in the same way I could my chickens. Chickens could have 5 gallons of water with some nipples and a larger gravity fed feeder and be good... but I don't feel like I could just leave the ducks and be confident they will have clean drinking water for a week, or even for more than 24 hours!

 

[PirateGirl]

I'd like to write articles about:

• How to keep the duck swimming pool clean - without toppling it over daily and rinse it with a garden hose. More thinking about installing underground pipes, float valve and a solenoid drain valve.
• How to provide and endless amount of drinking water to the ducks and prevent it from freezing
• Spill free duck feeders with large stock
  
• How to scare away airborne predators
• Nestboxes for ducks

If had just the time to do it…

Ultimately if my duck pool could drain into some drip irrigation lines for the garden, and somehow miraculously not be clogged with gunk...

 

[Miss Lydia]

I love having my drakes!!

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

These are things I think about regularly, but don't have great answers for! Ducks and mess and ducks and water are the endless problems. There's got to be an easier way to deal with both. I feel everyone has their own techniques, but I don't feel like I could leave my ducks for a week alone in the same way I could my chickens. Chickens could have 5 gallons of water with some nipples and a larger gravity fed feeder and be good... but I don't feel like I could just leave the ducks and be confident they will have clean drinking water for a week, or even for more than 24 hours!

Ducks need clean drinking water? My ducks prefer the muddy soup in the drainage ditch over the clean water i give them. And if the drainage ditch is dry and i put out a bowl with clean water they all hop in, wash, poop and then drink the water.
My ducks want their water dirt and muddy!

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Ultimately if my duck pool could drain into some drip irrigation lines for the garden, and somehow miraculously not be clogged with gunk...

I have a concrete plan for an almost self cleaning duck-pool:

• Plastic Kiddie pool installed in the ground
• Standard kitchen sink drain without the strainer installed at the lowest point
• PVC pipe underground to dump the water into your neighbors garden
• A manual or electric drain-valve installed into that PVC pipe
  
• A fresh-waterline to the pool with a float valve

When the drain-valve is opened, all the water rushes out of the pool, taking most of the muck and gunk with it. Leave the valve open for a minute, so that the fresh water pours into the pool (float-valve) and washes out the remaining dirt. Then close the drainage valve and the pool will fill up again with clean water.
If the drainage valve is a solenoid, i could use a micro-controller connected to my WiFi network (maybe with a dirty water sensor) to control the draining process, for example drain the pool at 3am when there's no duck in.
I will try to build that, i will, just when…

 

[Conan]

10 reasons to embrace living with a drake

I certainly can't be the only one who loves having a drake!

10 reasons to only have ONE drake?
I have had nothing but problems when trying to keep more than one, regardless of my how many hens I have. Isolation never helped. Slow, drawn out introductions didn't help. Having a drake pen without hens around didn't help.

Or how keeping a drake isn't for everybody?
Can't count the number of times I've seen folks on here terrified of what their ducks were doing to one another

Or a fun article comparing ducks to 50's style street gangs. Mine are total gangsters. If there is squabble, they circle round murmuring, and egging them on. They gang battle rival gangs (i.e. the call ducks or the wild mallards that frequent their pen) by talking smack at each other through the fence, the drakes have their favorite gals that reign supreme at the top of the hen hierarchy. I can't be the only one with gangster ducks, right?

 

[PirateGirl]

10 reasons to only have ONE drake?
I have had nothing but problems when trying to keep more than one, regardless of my how many hens I have. Isolation never helped. Slow, drawn out introductions didn't help. Having a drake pen without hens around didn't help.

Or how keeping a drake isn't for everybody?
Can't count the number of times I've seen folks on here terrified of what their ducks were doing to one another

Or a fun article comparing ducks to 50's style street gangs. Mine are total gangsters. If there is squabble, they circle round murmuring, and egging them on. They gang battle rival gangs (i.e. the call ducks or the wild mallards that frequent their pen) by talking smack at each other through the fence, the drakes have their favorite gals that reign supreme at the top of the hen hierarchy. I can't be the only one with gangster ducks, right?

Oh my, I never thought of my ducks as gangsters, but they totally are!

 

[PirateGirl]

Maybe "Ducks as Sexual Creatures" from slow dancing with head bobbing to adult swim in the kiddie pool.

 

[Conan]

Maybe "Ducks as Sexual Creatures" from slow dancing with head bobbing to adult swim in the kiddie pool.

Ducks: A Story of Eroticism.
Write it!