General coop cleaning and duck questions

[CoriM]

I have sand in my Run and use pine shavings in my Duck house. My Run is covered in chain link and a tarp over top. In winter I put up vapour barrier on all 4 sides to block out wind and weather.

Can you use any type of sand? I am thinking about putting sand in the area around the pond as straw keeps falling in. Are ducks fine to lay around on sand?

 

[Beaglegal]

My ducks are almost 4.5 months old and have been in their coop for the last couple of months. I have a few questions and am looking forward to any advice anyone can offer. I live in the Pacific NW, so rainy winters, rarely snow or freezing. Attaching a picture of the coop and run my husband built. He installed a little pond in it but the ducks won't swim in it, except occasionally for a few minutes when it's fresh water, and I do change it once a day. They mostly view it as a giant water dish, which is frustrating. At first I thought it was because they couldn't touch the bottom, though there are two elevated portions along the edge where they can stand on a paver and hop out easily. So, I filled the whole thing with rounded pebbles. That just serves to trap all their food sediment and make it really stinky. I think I should go ahead and take all those out, since it didn't improve the swimming situation anyway. That's my first issue.

Secondly, I'm just not knowing for sure how everyone is keeping their coop clean. I have 6 ducks, and they poop a lot, as everyone knows. I was going to try to do the deep litter method. There is bare dirt beneath the run portion, and linoleum tiles in the enclosed coop portion. So I've been piling on straw and a tiny bit of pine shavings. A couple times a day I rake it around and sprinkle some fresh straw to cover up the wettest or poopiest areas. I'm shoveling out loads of yucky straw every week and I don't really know the best way to dispose of so much straw. Right now I'm stashing it in the woods surrounding my yard, but I just don't know what's best. Up until a few weeks ago I did have the rounded pebbles around my pond, but when one of my ducks got bumblefoot I became afraid about that surface and covered that area with straw. *Bumblefoot almost completely gone!
Would love any advice on how to keep things clean and what to do with so much straw!!

And finally, after building such a lovely coop, we realized that the ducks mostly want to come and hang out in the backyard and be by us and forage around. And swim in their blue kiddie pool, which they adore so much more than the nice little pond we put in their run. In the good weather this has worked out fine, but I feel like we're in for a really long and boring winter of them being stuck in the coop with no foraging. We have lots of predators in the woods surrounding my house, so free-range is not an option. Anyone else in a similar situation have a creative solution? I get nervous leaving them in my backyard unsupervised and I know hanging out outside with the ducks isn't going to work very often in the winter. Are they okay being contained in their run and coop area during the wet and cold months?

Thanks for bearing with me on this long email, and thanks in advance for any advice! View attachment 1917114 View attachment 1917115 View attachment 1917116

I just wanted to say hi, I am also in the PNW in a rainy area as well. I am new to ducks so I got some good tips from this thread as well. Thanks for posting it. I hope you enjoy your ducks!

 

[CoriM]

I just wanted to say hi, I am also in the PNW in a rainy area as well. I am new to ducks so I got some good tips from this thread as well. Thanks for posting it. I hope you enjoy your ducks!

Nice! I am just east of Seattle. What type of ducks do you have?

 

[Beaglegal]

Nice! I am just east of Seattle. What type of ducks do you have?

I am about 15 min outside of Olympia. I have a Cayuga drake, a possibility mixed Cayuga female, a Rouen female and 4 young ducks which seem to be a mix between Rouen and Cayuga. How about you?

 

[CoriM]

Nice, those are both pretty birds! I have three pekins and three welsh harlequins - all female. Two of them just started laying and I'm so excited about that!

 

[Beaglegal]

Nice, those are both pretty birds! I have three pekins and three welsh harlequins - all female. Two of them just started laying and I'm so excited about that!

I’ve thought about the Welsh Harlequins, how do you like them so far?

 

[CoriM]

Well they're not laying yet, but they're supposed to be productive there. They're pretty, and small. Compared to the pekins they're small in stature, and quieter in personality I think. The pekins just have so much personality I guess they overshadow my welsh, but the pekins have issues with legs, and seem prone to bumblefoot, so more work. And they eat way more than the welsh.

 

[katiebrock]

I use hay because I get beautiful round bales for free and it's clean and smells so good. I am a bit more picky in the summer time with my clean up because it's just so hot here and I don't want a bunch of flies.

I have 11 runners and 2 pens so every morning I take a garden fork and just barely get under the flattened poopie pancakes that they make with their little webbies. I get a bit of hay with it but that's fine and I just throw it out into their run. I make a pile of it and every day I turn it and boy do they love foraging through that! In the wintertime, I'm more likely to just turn the hay over and add more to it. I think it was about 2' deep this spring when I did the spring cleaning.

We are in the process of redoing our run and making it much bigger so I've been taking the poop hay piles and spreading it around in the new section where we dug up to put the poles in. It really cuts down on the mud in the pools for sure.

If you've got predators I sure wouldn't let them out loose to forage. You could get some welded wire fencing at TSC (NOT chicken wire) but you definitely need protective netting or something overhead. I had a falcon kill my Daisy last year. I thought the ducks were too big to be attacked but I was wrong. They swoop down, kill them and eat them right in the run. That seriously sucked! Anyway, it looks like you have a nice area to set up a little fence for them conncecting it right to their coop. Doesn't have to be big, just something so they don't get bored and can move around a bit but do get the netting for the top. I got this green plastic stuff on amazon and it worked very well.

Do you ever have issues with the hay getting moldy? I decided to start using grass clippings, and I really like them, but I am worried about mold.

 

[DuckyDonna]

I just wanted to say hi, I am also in the PNW in a rainy area as well. I am new to ducks so I got some good tips from this thread as well. Thanks for posting it. I hope you enjoy your ducks!

nice to meet you! I'm glad you found some information good for you. There are lots of people on here from all over the world that are anxious to help so don't be afraid to ask if you have any questions!

 

[MerryMeridional]

Do you ever have issues with the hay getting moldy? I decided to start using grass clippings, and I really like them, but I am worried about mold.

I would not put fresh clippings inside the coop. That would be better suited to an outdoor run area where there is free ventilation and it can either break down and rot or dry out in the open.

Any weeds or garden trimmings I have go in the run area. They eat what they want, usually skeletonizing the plant by eating the softer green leaves and leaving the stems, and the rest of it eventually dries out and becomes part of the "brown" matter in their run.
We threw the grass clippings in there a bit but had to do a weed treatment in the early summer and after that just threw the clippings in the trash. Herbicides can not only make your ducks sick but can pass through their waste. And since I use their waste on my veggie garden, that's a bad idea.