Duck House - Staying Dry? Winter Tips?

[NStai]

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!

 

[ducksinvt]

Hello, and welcome to BYC!!!! u could start by taking the water/food out of the house at night, as they do not need water/food at night, that will eliminate a huge amount of moisture, im sure more advanced duckers will have more/better suggestions for you!!!!

 

[Duck mommy 2019]

Hello, and welcome to BYC!!!! u could start by taking the water/food out of the house at night, as they do not need water/food at night, that will eliminate a huge amount of moisture, im sure more advanced duckers will have more/better suggestions for you!!!!

actually they do need it, especially water!! ducks don’t sleep through the night like chickens do and need to be able to eat and drink as needed

 

[NStai]

Hello, and welcome to BYC!!!! u could start by taking the water/food out of the house at night, as they do not need water/food at night, that will eliminate a huge amount of moisture, im sure more advanced duckers will have more/better suggestions for you!!!!

Thank you! No food inside the house at night (generally, there were a few days we had to put them to bed earlier so we gave them some food), but at the peak of winter, they'd be going from 4:30-5pm (dusk) until 7:30-8am the next morning without water.... so essentially 15 or so hours without water.... that seems like an awfully long time... but maybe to your point that is fine.

 

[NStai]

actually they do need it, especially water!! ducks don’t sleep through the night like chickens do and need to be able to eat and drink as needed

Thanks for the reply.... yeah that's what I was thinking... 15 hours without water for a duck seems rough! In summer if it's only 8-10 hours, maybe more feasible...?

 

[ducksinvt]

I personally do not want my duck house being frozen solid and a complete mess, so they goto bed at 6 and get out at 730-8 everyday and they do just fine without until then, especially since the first thing they do is run and fly around to stretch out, and then maybe go find food and water or go lurk around the yard, so my birds do perfectly perfectly fine without!!!!

 

[Trisseh]

Most nights my ducks don’t have water throughout the night. Not because it isn’t provided, but they play in it and empty it completely pretty much as soon as they go in for the night. Haha. I’ll probably wind up putting their full waterer outside and giving them a small amount inside to sip from before bed if they want. It freezes too hard here all winter to have their house full of water. The most important thing is not to have food in there if they don’t have water, and to make sure to provide water early, even if they don’t usually come out until later. You might find that they’re willing to come out earlier if they have to come out to get water. Lol. In the dead of winter my birds have the option of coming out by about 5:30am each morning, when I go out to do barn chores, and I don’t lock them up til 7-8 pm. No worse for wear if they don’t have full access to water during that time.

 

[Ratchnick]

No way you can keep dry bedding with water in the coop. Plus If they are not eating in the coop they are not pooping as much in the coop. That will save you some bedding. Dry bedding is more important then a midnight snack.

 

[KaleIAm]

My ducks go to bed at 530pm and get up at 730am year around (vets instructions - due to a specific illness) and have no water over night. My avian vet is aware and hasn't told me to provide water all night. I did give them water in their barn when they were younger, and it made a HUGE wet soggy mess. My opinion is that dry bedding is more important.

I admit that on the hottest summer evenings I come in their barn at about 9pm with a glass of water. I put a towel down and hold the water glass over it while they each take a sip. I'm surely being excessively anthropomorphic and coddling them.

"Do ducks need water at night," is a recurring topic. I think you'll find that some people provide water at night, but most people don't. What is very important, though, is removing food if you remove access to water.

 

[Duck mommy 2019]

i have two areas in their pens (mine don’t sleep outside) so that the big area stays dry and the small area has food and water