How dirty are your ducks? Anecdotes, please!

[FenDruadin]

How mucky are your ducks? What is the funniest dirty thing they do/have done? I'm looking for cute anecdotes about muddy/dirty/mucky ducks, so please share!

Here's mine: When I took all the winter bedding out of their pen to reveal the mud beneath, the next day their little pool was half-filled with water and half with sludge, because they could now reach the muddy bottom of their pen through the thin layer of straw (so of course they had to re-deposit that mud into their pool). When they came back in the next evening, I dutifully dumped the sludge out of the pool and re-filled it with fresh water. The ducks waddled in, went straight to their food dish and then -- completely ignored the pool full of fresh water in favor of dabbling in the puddle of sludge created from dumping their pool out.

I'll bet you all have even better stories. Let's hear them!

 

[chickensioux]

Not better but that is exactly what mine do. Clean pool inches away and they dabble in the muck from emptying the pool. Go figure......

 

[duckluck]

Well, one of the coolest things mine have done is, one day I went out there with a bucket of fresh minnows to dump into the pools for a treat...they now know what the yellow minnow bucket looks like...all 16 of them took wing and flew to me at one time! I wish I had that on film, it was really something!

 

[chocolate m'scovy]

Our ducks and our geese are in the same field, and you know how muddy those ducks make water. So now when they get fresh water, the geese stare at the water bucket, with fresh clean water in it, and don't know what it is! "This isn't water-water is brown and muddy!" But don't worry, the ducks quickly do their duty and flavor their water. Then the geese know that it's water.

 

[chocolate m'scovy]

Oh, and how do you think the ducks "flavour" clean water? They will run to the other end of the pen, grab beak-fulls of mud, and run right back to the water-bowl so they can swish out the mud in their water and dabble in it!

 

[lovesduckies]

hahah.. funny stories..

i don't have a dirty one since my ducks are inside ducks, but i have a funny story...

i was bring in water for them a few days ago and my female flew over to me and tried to perched in the flimsy plastic water container. there was water all over my floor. i couldn't help but just laugh..

well i kinda have dirty for you, my ducks live in my bedroom with me so i lay sheets and towels on my floor, my ducks love to ignore the sheets and towels and poo on the floor. they run into my mom and dads room to eat cat food and i guess they pooped on my mom's floor and she stepped in it HAHAHA.

 

[duckyfromoz]

I had been away for a few days and came home to find my white ducks on a warm day sitting in the kiddy pool...no water left really...it was pretty much all sludgy mud. They got out mostly white on top except for the beak and face...and brown on the bottom half. They did have relatively clean drinking water still..But Ihave always made sure I left more water when going away since then.

And another...not so much the ducks themselves...but because of them

I was out in the pen feeding and watering etc in the morning just before leaving for work .... got to work and found I was leaving a trail of mud poop and feathers behind me on the carpet... I cleaned up what i could...But forgot I have been upstairs too. I was up there half way throught the day and found a feather...stuck to a decent sized shoe tread shaped poop right in the middle of the office.

 

[lovesduckies]

Quote:

 

[chickensioux]

Clean the kiddie pool, ducks pacing....waiting......jump in when it's ready....and poop.

 

[newchickmom09]

I was trying to think about the worst messiest thing my ducks do and they really don't do anything terrible. They free range so they only go in there dog kennel every now and then to sleep so that doesn't get very messy.

Ok, well in there dog kennel we used to fill it with hay for them to sleep on before we switched to pine bedding. The kennel is a plastic kind that has the vent hole around the middle and the wire door. It was raining for about 3 days a few months ago so I went out there and threw a sheet over the kennel thinking that would keep the water out.

Well after 3 days of rain and the sun finaly came out I started to clean out the chickens and ducks bedding. The chickens was all fine and dry so that was easy and not really gross. So I was on a roll and thought next the ducks and just a few shovel scoops and I will be done. I went uncovered the kennel and saw bright green hay. Not thinking anything I put the shovel in there and it was full of water..just like a soup.

Once I broke the top barrier the stench arose. A mixture of hay (if you have smelt soaking wet hay that is nasty by itself), duck poo, and mud. It was terrible and very heavy to shovel out. It took me forever to clean that kennel and get that smell out of there plus get that smell off of me when I was done. That is probably the nastiest thing I have ever delt with. It could have all been prevented if I would have just searching in my hubby's shed (he is the only one that knows where anything is in that danger zone) to find a dumb tarp instead of just throwing a sheet over it.

In the end lesson learned. So that is kind of my fault not the ducks fault.

One thing my ducks do love to do is play in the pond water when we change the water. We over flow the pond and drain it out at least once a month and refill it. We use a hose so we can water all of our plants with the old water and muck since it is great for the plants. The smell is terrible since there is duck poo, fish poo, plants, all kinds of stuff in the water. After we get all of the main trees and plants watered we just let it drain over the back yard. Those ducks know what that black hose means and they walk along the hose until they find the end and dabble around every tree and plant until we move the hose. Which is good since they find and eat all of those stupid grubs and ants. When we put the hose to drain to the yard it makes huge puddles everywhere and those ducks go and flop play all in that nasty water. When they are done and the ground finaly soaks all of the water up you can smell those two walking around the yard they smell so bad.

It takes almost 2 days for them to get that smell off.