I live in New Orleans, and this will be my first hurricane season with ducks. I fully plan on taking my ducks and 2 dogs with me should the need arise. Hopefully it will not. I have a dog kennel that I will transport them in, and my ducks have a diaper. My parents live in Houston, so typically I would meet them ( since my husband would have to stay and work). But we usually leave the coast all together going either to Arkansas or north Alabama, one time we even went all the way to tennesse. My question is, is everyone prepared for hurricane season, do you evacuate with your flock, and any tips? How much food should I bring? Should I bring bottled water for them or would tap from another area be ok? How to keep them from stressing? Any ideas for the car ride? Living on the gulf coast I just want to be prepared before I ever need to. My dogs are all set and I know the drill with that. But ducks are still new to me. Thank you
We have too many to take with us. We have three buildings rated for 150mph winds with individual or pair cages to lock everyone inside with.
I have 2 ducks and they will be leaving with me and the 3 dogs. 2 dogs if I leave one behind with DH if the air station will let him bring on there with him. Plans are to head to FL with MIL or head to a hotel somewhere and the ducks will be locked in the back of the truck as I don't know of hotels with ducks allowed policies lol Keeping my eyes open on CL for an airline style large dog kennel instead of the wire one I have.
I have too many and I don't know where I'd go anyway with chickens and ducks. I'd be lucky to round up all the dogs and cats. Good idea to think about this.
You could acclimate the ducks to being crated and riding by starting with short times in the crate, give them some peas in there. When they are used to that, then start going for short rides. That way things won't seem to different to them. You can take some water from home and gradually mix it into the other water. Make sure to take something that they can bathe in too. I would bring enough food for a few weeks, better safe than sorry in case you can't get what you want wherever you end up. Take a ducky first aid kit too. Not sure what to put in it, but someone on here will have some suggestions. Good luck to you. Feel bad for hubby.
No hurricanes here, but we have wildfires. My dogs are trained to run out the front door and jump into my van. We have practice "fire drills" to make sure they will do it. I have a small travel trailer all packed with portable dog fencing and dog equipment. If I have time to hitch up, we are good to go in about 5 minutes. The ducks are locked in at night, and can be driven into their coop during the day to catch them and shove them into dog crates. They'd be crowded, but crowded is better than roasted alive. The geese aren't hard to catch. But catching birds is going to realistically add 20-30 minutes to an evacuation, so I hope I have that much time to get out. I can carry all the crates of poultry and all the dogs in my van. No room for anything else, but I've got my credit card and will buy what we need. As long as humans and animals get out, everything else can be replaced.
My plan so far is to get the ducks into the back of the station wagon, probably in the large coated wire crate. I have transported ducks a few at a time before. The cats in carriers will be in the back seat, we can get a 50 pound bag of feed, a 30 pound bag of kibble, a couple of jerry cans of water, and some bowls on the back seat floorboards. (We have nine runners.) There would be room still for a couple of backpacks. Great topic! Here it would be fires more than flood.
If its a flood, just let em swim!! But seriously my parents wouldnt let me take all my ducks, plus more on the way with all the hatches im having. We have a screened in porch, what we did when we wont on vacation was that we caught all the ducks and put them in a sectioned off portion of the porch and gave them their pool and waterers and then had someone coome in ever day and feed them. If we had to evacuate i would bring my indoor duck (soon to be) and then just move all the ducks on the porch..not sure if the screen would protect them at all, but atleast they wouldnt be near the canal were the gators like to come up in floods. If we didnt have anytime at all, like it was a really bad really close storm or fire or anything like that and we only had like 30 minutes i would just get a tubaware and put as many as i could in there and not even section off the porch just let them have free range of it, and then gte my indoor duck and head out with the dogs and mom dad and sis..I bet they wouldnt even help me get them some what safe!!
