Feed, Water, Nesting, and Flooring suggestions.

[NewbieChuckies505]

Hi everyone, any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

New to this. But our chicks are ready to go outside, feathered and jumping on furniture from their brooder. We have a coop for them but it doesn’t have a foundation so they are on dirt/sand, not too much of soft sand. And right now they just have their waterer and feeder for their brooder so it’s tiny.

1) Suggestions on flooring? Is pine shavings okay? Even in their chicken run?

2) What size of feeder and waterer do we need or any ideas on DIY bigger sets of them?

3) Should we get sand bowl/late/tray for the chicks?

4) Also our ducks are getting really big- but not 100% feathered yet- are they ready for the coop? And any ideas with them as well since they will be sharing a space with the chicks?

5) Also our kiddie pool we have for the ducks— how often will we need to clean it out for them?

Sorry I realize that’s a lot of questions. But I appreciate your time.

 

[GodLovesU]

1. I have used pine shavings, hay, and straw. There are other beddings, but I haven’t never had problems with these.
2. It depends on how many birds you have. Will the chickens and ducks be on the same diet?
3. What do you want sand for? As a dust bath?
4. @Jenbirdee can help here more than I can.
5. I hear ducks are very messy, so I would say daily or every other day.

You also mentioned a sand floor, which sounds easy for predators to dig into. Can you post a picture of your coop?

 

[NewbieChuckies505]

1. I have used pine shavings, hay, and straw. There are other beddings, but I haven’t never had problems with these.
2. It depends on how many birds you have. Will the chickens and ducks be on the same diet?
3. What do you want sand for? As a dust bath?
4. @Jenbirdee can help here more than I can.
5. I hear ducks are very messy, so I would say daily or every other day.

You also mentioned a sand floor, which sounds easy for predators to dig into. Can you post a picture of your coop?

Hi, yes chicks and ducks are on same diet now. IF separated the chicks get their starter feed, but since they are mostly together they share the same crumble. But we have 13 chicks and 4 ducks.

Yes the sand would only be for a dust bath. Do they need these?

I’ll post a picture tomorrow- today we are experiencing high winds and we live in a very dusty spot unfortunately.

Yes my cute little ducks are very messy— learned my lesson with them. Thank you for the information and for providing the other user name.

 

[Jenbirdee]

All flock feeds are good for both
I used to have my chickens together with my ducks, but have since separated that because my three chickens were terrorizing my 15 ducks . It sounds funny, but actually, it was pretty horrific. My ducks were so frightened. Three of them had prolapses because every time they found a place to lay an egg a chicken would chase them off. One of them died because the chickens shredded the prolapse anyway hopefully your chickens will be nice to your ducks.
I suggest adding nutritional yeast to their feed if you haven’t been already, Ducks need extra niacin.
And the extra niacin from the nutritional yeast isn’t bad for the chickens either. How much space will your ducks and chickens have? How big is the run? Are they going to stay in there all the time? You said the ground it’s on is Sandy dirt most people here recommend wood chips for the dirt part the big chunky kind of natural wood chips. I have never used them because my birds don’t actually have a run, they have their coops and their own yards fenced in sections of my yard with many obstacles like bushes tables, chairs, children’s playhouses, etc., for hawk protection.
The Ducks pools I change every day. I dump out the water, rinse the pool and refill it every day but occasionally I miss a day which is OK if the weather is not hot.
Ducks also need to always have water deep enough to dunk their head into even if they do not have a pool they have to at least be able to dunk their head. So buckets are good waters for Ducks. Chickens at least mine will also drink out of the buckets, but I got my chickens one of those waters with the little cups sticking out and they love it.
I’m concerned if you run and coop will be predator proof if the floor is Sandy dirt and there is no flooring in their coop building predators will definitely dig underneath. Unless you skirt it with hardware cloth you can probably look up how to do that how to skirt a coupe with hardware cloth.
My duck house has a sturdy wood floor. That’s up about 18 inches off the ground, but I still attached hardware cloth skirt all around it. I dug a foot and a half deep into the ground and then 2 feet out. Install the cloth and fill the holes back in so nothing can dig under there.

Inside my chicken coop, I use farm straw, which is very finally chopped nice soft pieces of straw but inside my duck house I use pine chips because they’re more absorbent and then in the winter I add straw on top of the pine chips. You have to be careful with straw though Because it can carry aspergillus mold spores I found out the hard way and lost one of my favorite Ducks to aspergillosisThose are just a few ideas. I have that are maybe helpful for you.

Oh, one more thing I tried making nice dust baths for my chickens, but they never used them for about a year They prefer to make their own wherever they feel like it . Then one day I used a baby pool with Pete Moss and some topsoil mixed in to it. Also, a little sand, and they loved it.
There is also a bedding for horse stalls that comes in pellet form when it gets wet they break apart into what is similar to Pete Moss in texture and my chickens really love to dust bath in that too