Duck House - Staying Dry? Winter Tips?

[21hens-incharge]

Mine do not get food or water in the coop. They go to bed at 6:30-7:00 right now (their choice) and I open the coop at 6am every morning. I have a flood light in the run so turn it on when I go out.
By the time I have done all the rest of my morning chores it is light enough I can turn the flood light off.

No one seems to be suffering from nights of doing without. They stretch and flap before getting a drink or eating.

 

[KaleIAm]

My duck had a vet check up today so I decided to directly ask if it will harm my ducks to be without water for the night. She said it is fine to be without water overnight as long as they have access to water all day. She also said that dry bedding is very important.

She did say that if I am worried about it and want to give them water overnight to make sure I give them water in a separate location so that they don't get their bedding wet.

 

[NStai]

Wow, thank you all - really appreciate the incredible wealth of knowledge. We will phase them off water at night, which seems to be the general consensus which should help to keep the bedding dry for winter!

Thank you again!

 

[corriemartin]

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!)
View attachment 2394034


And then pictures of the duck house, exterior...
View attachment 2394033

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!
View attachment 2394035

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!
View attachment 2394036

Happy to provide more pictures/details!

Appreciate any advice, ideas and looking forward to continuing to learn about these great little creatures!

Thank you!

That's pretty much the setup we have, and things were pretty wet in the house, but when I put the waterer in a bigger tub, that pretty much eliminated the problem.

 

[DuckinDonutsBensalem]

Thank you for posting this. I am new to ducks. I am in SE PA and worrying about all of these things too.

 

[NStai]

Thank you for posting this. I am new to ducks. I am in SE PA and worrying about all of these things too.

No worries, I know this was really great information for me, so hopefully helpful for others as well!

 

[EvaluationUnit]

I'm using a 5 gallon coop cup setup and found that dropping one of these in the bucket during the winter works marvelously: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B072VFMPKH/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1

The only thing is that you'll need to buy a grounding rod and bang it into the ground, then run some copper wire into the bucket. But if you're keeping ducks now then you really only have to do it once.

You should also consider getting a food grade bucket instead of a homer bucket for the water just to help keep down chemical consumption over time.

I also don't water my ducks at night (I'm in NH so my zone isn't too off from yours). We tried that in the beginning but it just creates such a mess and is especially hard to deal with in the winter when things start freezing so we took the water out. They don't seem to mind at all. They barrel out looking for food in the morning whether they've had water or not all night.

 

[NStai]

I'm using a 5 gallon coop cup setup and found that dropping one of these in the bucket during the winter works marvelously: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B072VFMPKH/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1

The only thing is that you'll need to buy a grounding rod and bang it into the ground, then run some copper wire into the bucket. But if you're keeping ducks now then you really only have to do it once.

You should also consider getting a food grade bucket instead of a homer bucket for the water just to help keep down chemical consumption over time.

I also don't water my ducks at night (I'm in NH so my zone isn't too off from yours). We tried that in the beginning but it just creates such a mess and is especially hard to deal with in the winter when things start freezing so we took the water out. They don't seem to mind at all. They barrel out looking for food in the morning whether they've had water or not all night.

Thank you for the detailed response! Will check out that heater for the winter...

Good call on the food grade bucket, their older one was food grade, but then we wanted to make one with taller holes and we used the only new bucket we had laying around...

Their main "pond" they drink from outside is a 14gallon cement mixing pan from Home Depot... any recommendations on replacing that with something more food grade?

We've stopped giving water at night based on this thread, and that has certainly helped to keep their house clean!

 

[21hens-incharge]

Thank you for the detailed response! Will check out that heater for the winter...

Good call on the food grade bucket, their older one was food grade, but then we wanted to make one with taller holes and we used the only new bucket we had laying around...

Their main "pond" they drink from outside is a 14gallon cement mixing pan from Home Depot... any recommendations on replacing that with something more food grade?

We've stopped giving water at night based on this thread, and that has certainly helped to keep their house clean!

I know you aren't asking me but.....my two cents anyway.....

For drinking water I am using a 5 gallon dish designed for livestock...to me that means it is safe for them. It is wider and not as deep as the 5 gallon flat back buckets.
With it being 5 gallons it is easier to pick up and dump to clean than the cement mixing tub would be.

You can see it next to the fence in this picture.....

 

[EvaluationUnit]

Thank you for the detailed response! Will check out that heater for the winter...

Good call on the food grade bucket, their older one was food grade, but then we wanted to make one with taller holes and we used the only new bucket we had laying around...

Their main "pond" they drink from outside is a 14gallon cement mixing pan from Home Depot... any recommendations on replacing that with something more food grade?

We've stopped giving water at night based on this thread, and that has certainly helped to keep their house clean!

Our local supermarket (Market Basket) sells the food grade plastic buckets which we also use for maple syrup collection, but I'm sure if you wanted to swap out you could buy food grade 5 gal buckets online easily.

21hens-incharge uses a livestock bowl... Yep, those come in all kinds of sizes! We have one we use in case the water abruptly freezes over before we can get the heater in. If it's good enough for a horse or cow probably good enough for a duck!