Leaving ducks over the weekend... how?

[MakeshiftAcre]

The cats I can leave with a bowl of food and a bowl of water. The sheep I can leave with a fresh pasture or a hamper of hay and a big bucket of water. The guineas I can leave with a feeder and a waterer. But the ducks manage to reduce their water within minutes to a muddy residue... even if there is no mud in the pen..! and spread the remainder all over their bedding. Also if I left them with enough food I am afraid that they would hurt themselves by choking it all down the first day and have none the next two.

If I can find someone reliable to give them a fresh bucket of food and water daily, that would be best, but if I cannot..? The best thing I can think of is to leave them as big a waterer as I can manage, of the hole-cut-for-their-head variety, and perhaps a head of lettuce or cabbage or a melon. Perhaps a string of cabbages.

I have three Khaki Campbells, and am hoping to add a pair of silkies as soon as I can find some.

Help?

 

[jducour]

They require a checkup daily, it sounds like. It would be so devastating to come home and find they cleared out their water the first day, and went for two days without clean water. They may not make it in this heat. Have you tried a gravity feeder for the food? I fill mine up every 4-6 days, it holds 12 pounds of feed, but the ducks never spill food out of it, and it is accessible 24 hours a day - though they only eat out of it at night because they forage during the day.

When I go out of town for more than a day, and no one is home to care for the ducks, I have a few neighbors I can trust to look in on them. I actually ask at least two separate families to help, so if one forgets, the other will notice. I ask one to come over once or twice a day to play with them and give them a treat. The ducks get people hungry, and go a little quackers if they don't have human interaction every day. I have to pry them off my legs for the next week if they don't get enough lovins. The other person is in charge of locking them in their house at night, making sure the pond pump is running and the filters get changes, and getting the ducks out in the morning and gathering the eggs. I know that sounds like a lot of work, but it takes less than 5 minutes, and they get to keep the eggs!

I have really great neighbors - people I have known for at least 30 of my 33 years. I know most people aren't that lucky

You could try introducing a gravity feeder and a water nipple system - it would guarantee they have clean food and water no matter what - and use their pans for bathing and clearing their nares. This is my setup - water bucket with nipples in the front, gravity feeder in the back. In their night house this is what they have access to. During the day, they have a 3,000 gallon pond to swim, mate and dip their heads in.

 

[TLWR]

How many ducks and how big is their pen?

We leave ours overnight and recently up to 4 or 5 days with their bin full of food and their pool of water as well as a large cement mixing pan of water.
Won't work as well in the heat though as the water will get nasty - especially now that their yard is all dirt after we had trees removed.

 

[MakeshiftAcre]

3 ducks in a 5'x10' pen. During the day they have a rubber bathing pan and access to the sheeps' water bucket and 10,000 sq' fenced yard, but at night only a gallon milk jug with a hole cut in.