This is my first year getting ducks, I have a few questions. Name ideas? Do they like to play with certain things/toys? How do you guys clean their pens/their poop and do you have to have like a base for them? (Like woodchips) looking for suggestions and opinions!
My girls don't seem to like to play with anything. They have fun rooting around for bugs and things. I'm in the south. My girls have a wood house. I hose it out daily. They have a bin with pinestraw to lay eggs. I don't put anything down on the floor of the house for them.
My ducks were named Pumpernickel, Oats, Barley, Wheat, Spelt and Rye. Ducks LOVE water from muddy puddles to ponds and lakes. A tank of water in there would keep them entertained endlessly. As for the base, anything is fine with them. They would enjoy it if you let them turn the place into a mud pit but that might not be what you're going for. Haha! Wood chips, grass, dirt, sand. It's all fine for the pen. As for the house, I use hay. It gets replaced every couple weeks and I hose the place down.
My ducks were named Aye (I-A) and Oorun (O-roo)... They are in a different language; means earth and sun. Ducks like food a lot, so giving them treats that they have to work at (A head of lettuce, a watermelon cut in half..) will be a big hit. Some may be interested in a laser pointer, but others will just as soon ignore the red dot and waddle away to play in the grass... They might be interested in a mirror...Because that makes it look like more duckies!! You can also make Toss Toys out of amber prescription bottle... Drill a couple of holes into it that's big enough for treats to fall out. Fill the prescription bottle with food that's small enough to fit through the holes, and if you throw it, or the ducks peck at it, treats should fall out . For their daytime pen, we used mulch.... Big mistake. Instead of absorbing their poop/moisture, the poop would get clotted up, causing me to have to shovel out clumps of dried mulch and poop... Never again. We used pine shavings for the house, and that worked pretty well. We are thinking about using pine shavings for their day pen too, or maybe straw, hay, or grass clippings.
Hello..... My Ducks are silly and they play with everything.....Tree branches and mud flaps on trucks....Dog toys and my back door.... I use river rock in my Duck pen it is the round rock......It is slanted for drainage.....I hose it out and easy peasy...... Cheers!
