How to keep the duck house dry?

[Cottage Rose]

Hey that Holdrread set up is a GREAT idea!

 

[rainplace]

Quote:
Isn't it though. I'm thinking about putting one of those off my current duck house. He also puts them off his brooder housing.

 

[goosemama]

Thanks for the great photos of your ducks and geese bathing in the middle of a snowy yard. That gives me some well needed info about their wintertime habits. Think I am going to have to get a kiddy pool to set up for them outside of the henhouse so they can go out and bathe during the week. Or better yet get an air hose to keep the end of the pond nearest the henhouse open so they can go in there. I can just see myself trying to empty a solid frozen kiddie pool!!!

 

[Cottage Rose]

Depending on the weather of course, you have to dump the pools daily otherwise you have a
GIANT round ice cube in the morning.

I about break my back trying to get it out of the pool.

If its not too cold at night sometimes it just freezes over on the top and I bust it up with a shovel in the morning.
I discovered some containers at Home Depot that are for mixing cement in. They're more heavy duty than kiddy pools. They're a thicker black plastic, rectangle shape. They are alot easier to dump than the kiddy pools.
BTW if you try some the ones at Lowes are flimsier than the ones at Home Depot.

 

[Le Canard de Barbarie]

Here's the lean-to.

 

[goosemama]

I think I have one of those heavy duty black plastic square tubs you are talking about. We have used it in the past as a cat litter box and when the ducklings were small we put it in the fenced yard for them to swim in. Being adults they will have to take turns since they are a lot larger, - but it is definitely going to be easier to empty than a kiddie pool.

 

[lorihadams]

Go to home depot and tell someone in the plumbing dept that you want to put a drain in your baby pool for your ducks. We put a piece of pvc pipe into a hole drilled in the bottom edge of our pool and put a plug in it. We sealed everything with some kind of putty stuff (can you tell my dh did this without me) . Every evening when I go to close up the ducks in their house I pull the plug. I turn the hose on in the morning when I get outside first thing. I rinse it out and pour out any sludge that is leftover and voila, clean pool. A plus with this is that while I'm filling up the baby pool the hose is constantly running allowing me to fill the dog's water bowls, chicken's waterers, quail waterers, rabbit waterer, and finally the duck's bowl. By the time the pool is full I am done with my chores. I feed mine outside in the run only. I have one of those rubber tubs for water, I fill it about 2-3 inches at night and put it in the house with them. Enough for a drink but not a swim, and they get no feed at night. Keeps everything pretty dry so far.

 

[goosemama]

Your kiddie pool with a plug sounds a great idea and I'll tuck it away but right now I hate to ask my poor husband to do anything more - he's given me his garden shed already and is so busy with his job. He reminded me today that we should have an electric floating stock tank heater stored somewhere. We used it when we raised sheep years ago. Found it today so we are going to try and keep a small area of the pond opened this winter and I'll put a feeder out there for them too. My only worry is getting them back into the henhouse at night. This summer I gave up as they would just swim from one end of the pond to the other eluding us. This area is fenced in but nothing is fool proof. I can see this is going to be a learning period this winter. Today I did rig up a small plastic bucket sitting inside a larger plastic cat litter box as an additional waterer for the ducks when in the henhouse. They can submerge their head this way and its not too big for me to clean out and refill every day. The litter box underneath catches the extra they slop around and keeps the floor dry. I watched this afternoon and they went right to it preferring it to the chicken fount. So that's one problem solved.

 

[lorihadams]

Here's a pic of the drain from the outside. All we did was cut a hole in the bottom edge of the pool and insert a threaded piece of pvc with a screw on cap. Then you put putty around it and let it dry completely, check to see that it is watertight and insert a piece of pvc pipe in the outside so that the water drains away from the pool, ours is long enough that it goes into the woods behind the pen.

Took about 15 minutes to do minus drying time for the putty.

 

[Cottage Rose]

What kind of putty do you use and how does it hold up in freezing temps?