What bedding to use on a dirt floor?

Hey all, I need some advice. Recently I suffered a major attack on my duck flock, and went from 14 to 3 in just a day. The remaining half grown duckling was killed in the night house by something unknown - it nailed her in the back of the head and she died, but it didn't eat her. It was my own fault for forgetting to close it up that night, and I feel guilty about it. Did the same thing to a silkie chick that was in there. If anyone has any idea what would do that, I'd appreciate you telling me, but I digress.

Anyway, the only 'upside' to this is that the remaining ducks are finally using the duck night house, which means I finally need to get bedding for it, especially since I'm taking back two female ducklings I gave my aunt earlier (with promises of babies in the spring!) so I can have a nice flock of three females and my one remaining male, who survived both attacks. I don't really want to use pine shavings, because I can just imagine the mess the ducks would make in them, plus they would be really hard to clean out of there. I was thinking maybe hay, but I wanted to hear peoples' opinion on it. What do you think would be best for a dirt floor?

 

Ugh, I guess shavings it is. Last thing I need is a bunch of duck poop to cake up. And hay in the nesting boxes is a good idea. Guess I better pick up yet another bag of the stuff tomorrow and get it spread out, especially since the duckies are confined until I get a better idea of what would eat 11 ducks in a day and not take a single chicken...I think I need a guard goose...but that's just my morefowl disease acting up

 

The house is being surrounded by a run that can't be dug under. So I'll be picking up pine shavings. Guess I'll just have to keep up with it and do more changes than I do for the chickens. Ah well.