ducks with dropping wings

[hdowden]

ok i noticed my parents had 2 muscovy drakes with dropping wings and i pointed it out and all they wanted to say was it was because of the mud that the ducks have made in their pen. i know it is not from the mud. today one of them died. both were/are eating and drinking just fine. the reason i am asking what could be wrong is because i house my ducks in the same area while i am building new pens. everyone gets along never see any fights. poop looks normal and they sound normal so thinking some sort of infection. they get feed corn and pellets never have had a problem like this with ducks before but with so much rain and pens not drying out like they need to i'm guessing there is something growing in the pen and i don't want to lose any of my ducks and am hoping to have the pens done this weekend to get them outta there

forgot to mention they are a healthy weight, the one that died was not under weight in any shape form or fashion in fact he was top drake.

 

[CelticOaksFarm]

could be anything from respiratory (due to the very wet conditions) to cocciodosis (from small pens with many birds sharing the area)

 

[hdowden]

it keeps raining down here before anything can really dry up it's frustrating when you but chips and other adsorbent materials in the pens and remove the soaked stuff for it to turn around and rain and make all that work seem well pointless and the ground even worse than before grrrrr it needs to stop raining down here for at least a month and a half to give everything time to really dry up -__-

 

[CelticOaksFarm]

without seeing the pens it is hard to give suggestions for a better fix. However wood chips can be a lot of things to a lot of people. Chips to me is large chunk mulch for flower beds, but I had someone recently call pine shavings (used in horse stalls and coops) chips. The second wont work in outside conditions other making a ton of work to remove it as it gets soaked.

digging down in a run/pen adding landscape cloth and then large/medium rock covered with smaller rock and then sand would create a well draining base for water to move away. You also have to not over crowd the pen so they arent adding to the mess and so you can keep up with making the pen clean for them to live in.

If you have Muscovy adding roosting spots would also be a good idea, and of course free ranging them so they can give the ground in the pen a break from foot traffic, poop ect.

 

[hdowden]

pine shavins are not chips lol sorry but i wouldn't call them chips

yes it is a lot of work on the outside. we even dug tiny "ditches" to drain all the access water out but with the rain we kee having (and we are forcasted to have even more) it has made it impossable to get the pen dried up like it needs to be

i have never thought about doing something like that it sounds like it would be a lot easier to keep clean and drain a whole lot better as well. could this also work on chicken pens? the chickens do free range but the ducks like to fly and people around here like to duck hunt so i dont want to risk their lives but also do not want to clip their wings to prevent flight

for roost how big would they need to be? though they do have an elevated board sidding to get on they seem to like to lay and sleep on the ground but i would love to see if they like the roost instead of the board.