Urgent! Ducks plus winter storm??

[Shenoah]

Amen!

 

[Callender Girl]

An absolutely perfect description of life as shared with ducks!! I hope the party is a real blowout!

 

[writerskramp]

We live just north of Houston. Our two ducks have been outside all "winter"... but night time temps are usually 40-60F with the coldest ducks have ever been out in being about 30F. Tonight, it's supposed to hit 20F, the next night it's supposed to drop all the way to 10F and there's supposed to be ice/sleet as part of this storm. I've lived in south Texas for 26 years and never seen it hit 10 degrees! A couple weeks ago, it got into the freaking 80s ಠ_ಠ.

I love our ducks to pieces. They're beyond adorable... but let's face it, they dumb. Rain or sun, heat or cold, they just lay down in the grass to sleep, usually near our bedroom window (I think they like hearing us/music/tv, as that's where we spend all our time).

When I moved them outside, they started in an x-pen for about a month, with their pool in it and a cozy, well insulated dog house attached, to establish a "home base" before giving them free roam of our half-acre yard. Even then, they never once took advantage of the shelter despite going in there to eat from their feeder. They still have the dog house, pool, food and water there but the pen stays open and they go where they want. My husband has a broken ankle, which prevents using a tag-team approach to corner ducks into the pen so I can bring them inside (it's 50 inside 'cause our heat is out, so it's not like they'd get over heated from wearing winter coats inside) and they'll come near me but won't let me catch them if they can thwart me.

I know the most important factor with outdoor animals and extreme hot or cold is that they first get put outside during spring or fall, allowing them time to adjust their fur or feathers for summer and winter... but as I said, this is way colder than anything they've experienced. Basically, I need to know if they'll be ok through a storm in a part of the country that thinks 50 degrees is heavy winter coat weather and looks at someone in a t-shirt and sandals in that temperature like they're certifiable, lol.

They don't necessarily stay in the same spot each night, just in the same general vicinity. I'm gonna haul a bale of straw over there and rip it up into a pile, but I honestly don't trust them to be smart enough to bed down in it...

Ducks are hardier then chickens I would think.. I know what you are dealing with is unusual for you, but we deal with it as it were a walk in the park. I wish it were that warm the last three weeks.. Have been dealing with single digit and subzero for three weeks solid now.. Throw on top a foot or more of snow, which is nothing unusual and we survive. Chickens don't like snow.. Half will come out for some scratch, others will stay in the coup and cry.. Breaks my heart a bit, but that's life if you are incapable of taking care of yourself.. I speak of chickens. I thought maybe it was the cold, but their coup is actually warm from Deep liter method.. They want daddy to give them some scratch too.. They get fermented feed in a heated dog bowl and water on a heated pedestal inside the coup.. The water still freezes in subzero weather.. drat! So I wouldn't worry, an old cardboard box turned on it's side could serve as a shelter. If they want to use it.. or Darwinism will prevail.. Have had dogs who wouldn't use their fine insulated dog house and preferred to burrow under or sleep in a snow drift. Mideighties to midninties we hit -40 to -50 one night, unforeseen.. I freaked out hearing weather report.. One dog crawled out of the burrow and the other rose out of a snow drift completely covered.. Both were stiff but made it up the steps into the house.. Take care..