Mud and Odor control: stall mats or mobile pen?

[TheOtherHorse]

My ducks free range during the day, but are locked up in a small pen at night. Their pen is 7'x12' in my horse barn. The pen flooring is limestone dust covered by sand. There is no good way to keep the pen clean. It is always a filthy stinky mess. I have the water contained so that is no longer contributing to the mess, but just the duck poop still creates a thick layer of muck that is impossible to remove without taking the sand with it.

Would installing horse stall mats help? If so, should I add shavings or straw over them? How often would I need to strip and rebed the pen?

Another idea was to build a small mobile pen and duck house to keep outside that I would just move when it got too dirty...

 

[Poppyduck]

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[veronicasmom]

We have stall mats in our duck shed, covered with a tarp. It works well and the tarp can be replaced when it is really horrible. We did just the mats for a while, but in the winter it was better with the tarp due to the ice that sometimes came from them spilling water. We could just bend the tarp and the ice would pop up.
We also throw a bit of straw or hay down, it absorbs some of the poop and just sweeps out.

 

[Going Quackers]

I have stall mats in my main duck barn but i do bed on top, that said this is a building not a pen. They hose down real well, we have them with the horses too and are good for feet, so you could leave them 'naked' and hose them off..they dry well.

 

[HollyDuckFarmer]

When I decided to take the leap and switch over to sand, I read a post here written by a guy who wrote that once a year he would scrape/shovel out his old sand and just replace it with new. I could not understand that for anything, but I did go ahead with sand.

... A year or so later, I understand. It does have the potential to get icky, so now I do as that poster I told you about did. Sand is cheap. The work part of it is just par for the course ... Ducks are really not low maintenance, and so whatever you do, you will need to be maintaining it often.

Another option would be to use lime, but ONLY if you have another pasture/pen to use for a long period of time, like 6 months or so. Any sooner and that would burn your ducks.

I just shovel and scrape, add that fertilizer to my garden, and replace.