Hello all,
First time poster here, but been reading/researching from here for a while. Apologies in advance for the long post...
Background:
We have 12 Khaki Campbells, 10 ducks and 2 drakes located in Zone 6A (New York) that we raised from ducklings earlier this year.
The ducks have a 4x8 raised house with painted plywood/wood floors/walls that we built. We are currently going through about a bag of shavings (from Tractor Supply) a week in the duck house... by the end of the week everything is pretty wet from them drinking at night... so we replace all shavings (we throw the wet shavings into their outdoor run area). The water setup is a drill out 5 gallon bucket, that sits in a large basin which (hopefully) catches a lot of water drips.
Their outdoor run area is pretty large, maybe 15x15 and been pretty muddy lately due to a lot of rain (and some first snow of the year). This area is mainly old shavings from the duck house, mixed with some wood chips and of course a lot of mud! We have a fairly wet backyard unfortunately, so some mud in this area is probably a given.
Some questions:
As we get into winter especially, we want to make sure we can keep the duck house as dry as possible to ensure it is a place of warmth for the ducks. Any advice on our setup of how to better handle moisture? It seems rough to not provide water throughout the night, as the ducks are going in their around dusk (5:30-6pm right now) and not coming out until 7:30-8am the next morning. We have not provided food at night (except a few one offs).
Assuming we can keep the duck house dry, we would want to add a large amount of shavings and keep adding to it as needed - but right now our shavings just get so wet, we pretty much have to replace them weekly. Any thoughts?
Any other general tips for keeping their water from freezing? We were thinking of running an extension cord and using some sort of bubbler/de-icer to ensure their water does not freeze.
Pictures
See attached for a picture of the run and ducks (currently a mess as we've had about 4-5 days of straight rain!)
And then pictures of the duck house, exterior...
Here is the interior, we've used this crate on it's side with some fake wooden eggs to convince them to lay in one dry/clean spot!
Here is the water setup we are currently using inside the duck house... as you may be able to tell, there is a lot of splashing that happens near here which soaks the shavings!
Happy to provide more pictures/details!
Appreciate any advice, ideas and looking forward to continuing to learn about these great little creatures!
Thank you!
First time poster here, but been reading/researching from here for a while. Apologies in advance for the long post...
Background:
We have 12 Khaki Campbells, 10 ducks and 2 drakes located in Zone 6A (New York) that we raised from ducklings earlier this year.
The ducks have a 4x8 raised house with painted plywood/wood floors/walls that we built. We are currently going through about a bag of shavings (from Tractor Supply) a week in the duck house... by the end of the week everything is pretty wet from them drinking at night... so we replace all shavings (we throw the wet shavings into their outdoor run area). The water setup is a drill out 5 gallon bucket, that sits in a large basin which (hopefully) catches a lot of water drips.
Their outdoor run area is pretty large, maybe 15x15 and been pretty muddy lately due to a lot of rain (and some first snow of the year). This area is mainly old shavings from the duck house, mixed with some wood chips and of course a lot of mud! We have a fairly wet backyard unfortunately, so some mud in this area is probably a given.
Some questions:
As we get into winter especially, we want to make sure we can keep the duck house as dry as possible to ensure it is a place of warmth for the ducks. Any advice on our setup of how to better handle moisture? It seems rough to not provide water throughout the night, as the ducks are going in their around dusk (5:30-6pm right now) and not coming out until 7:30-8am the next morning. We have not provided food at night (except a few one offs).
Assuming we can keep the duck house dry, we would want to add a large amount of shavings and keep adding to it as needed - but right now our shavings just get so wet, we pretty much have to replace them weekly. Any thoughts?
Any other general tips for keeping their water from freezing? We were thinking of running an extension cord and using some sort of bubbler/de-icer to ensure their water does not freeze.
Pictures
See attached for a picture of the run and ducks (currently a mess as we've had about 4-5 days of straight rain!)
And then pictures of the duck house, exterior...
Here is the interior, we've used this crate on it's side with some fake wooden eggs to convince them to lay in one dry/clean spot!
Here is the water setup we are currently using inside the duck house... as you may be able to tell, there is a lot of splashing that happens near here which soaks the shavings!
Happy to provide more pictures/details!
Appreciate any advice, ideas and looking forward to continuing to learn about these great little creatures!
Thank you!