Hey, blufangirl
I say this with great respect for you and your duckies.
They are waterfowl, and you can manage things so that you are all happier, I think
Waterfowl have a special relationship with water. It is their joy and they cannot not play in it, splash it, put things in it. They are just duckies!
But we duck keepers can work with that!
They need a watering station. A section of the brooder that catches the splash. I wish I had figured this out before mine were older. However, I DID figure it out.
I use the bottom of a large plastic dog crate to hold their waterer. For ‘lings, something smaller will do. It needs to be big enough to hold the water and let a few ducklings get to it to drink.
In the bottom, I have sawdust pellets. My ducks are adults and know not to eat the sawdust. But for littles, I would cover the sawdust with an old towel or something that they cannot lift to get at sawdust pellets to eat them.
The sawdust absorbs the water, keeping the rest of the bedding dry. Put the food away from the water, not in the watering station.
Ducklings still need room service, but managing the water helps.
I let my ducklings have tub time every day or two. Supervised at all times. Water temp same as brooder temp 90F first week, dropping 5 degrees F each week after), generally for about ten minutes, because the littles get tuckered out. Then back into a warm brooder, wiping off the ones who do not preen themselves with a dry washcloth. I only had to do that a few times.
. The duck seems to be the instigator of all the panic. This all started about 2 weeks ago for no good reason. It seems to have started when the duck got her quack. My other concern is we got four sexed ducklings from Meyer's Hatchery a few days ago and they too are sweet playful ducks and I don't want the scared ducks to "infect" my new babies with their insanity. We had hoped to integrate the hatched ducks with the mail order ducks rather soon to make the assimilation easier. Any advise would be appreciated
