Messy Ducks!

[Carter90]

Ducks are messy creatures but they make up for it with their hilarity.

I personalty use industrial rugs and astroturf rugs in the house when the ducks are inside. I throw the rugs in the clothes washer every week and that seams to work fine. Also I use a vacuum to pick up loose food and wood shavings.

When holding the ducks I tend to use beach towels, the poop will slowly seep through.

For the cages I use wood shavings, in the past I used hay but It was way to messy and gave off to much scent.

 

[Trifolium]

I've had some pretty clean muscovy ducks and some messy ones. Messy ones like to dig soil far away and bring it back to the waterer for a rinse. The good ones don't like to drill mud. It helps if they can't do this when they were ducklings.

I separate my messy ones away so the younger ones don't learn this bad behavior and I try not to hatch eggs from the ones with bad habits. It also helps if you have a way to separate the water source from the dirt such as sitting the waterer on a wire flooring where the water falls into a pit they cannot put their bill into.

As for the feed, if your ducks like to knock the feed off, you could be wasting a lot if you have them on wire flooring. Feed can be without wire flooring so they can pick up their drops. It helps to have a larger feed container with high lips so prevent feed loss. Waterer, I feel, is best on wire on frame with a pit.


Some of my messy ones are usually the heavies, don't take bathe, and don't groom themselves well. The clean ones love taking bathes and their feathers are very clean and smooth. Generally, keeping birds with good habits and raising younger ones with them will reinforce good habits.

 

[quails-101]

My muscovy ducks are clean they do dig a lot and they like to dust but I mean they poop every where. Mine do bathe a lot they are always in the kiddie pools and their white feathers are always perfectly white. They were in their pools all day to day because it is 91 degrees in the shade in Orwell Ohio.