what does everyone use for duckling bedding?

[darren]

lost 6 baby ducks to pine bedding all were 5 weeks old before they decided to eat a bunch ,straw works good or paper towels or 1st couple of weeks

 

[darren]

no wood shavings i lost 6 call ducklings to wood shavings i had 30 and 6 of them ate a bunch of wood shavings and drank water, wood swelled up and they died the other duckling didnt eat as much if any and were fine.

 

[PetDuck]

Old towels.
It is a pain in the rear to keep them clean though.
(I change them twice a day.)

 

[HauiBali]

I use dry mown grass, the smell pretty well harmonizes with the ducklings poo, sweetens and smooths it up a little.
Anyway, I do not find their poo stinky, which is interesting cause chickpoo makes me keck.. Lucky me

There are two area of bedding in our duckhouse: one is a few handful of sundried mown grass&weeds near their waterplate - they step on it after swim, and they poo and splash water there, so it has a wet bottom layer and whenever I change their water in the day I spread a new dry layer on top. It is not just grass but all kinds of weed (without poisonous ones of course, like jimsonweed - those go to the burnbarrel immediately if found). This wet patch of bedding is changed completely every day, and the room is cleared with highpressure water, oxidizing spray and water again...

Also, my ducks have a few inch high tray, filled with silky mown grass, and grass only - this is where they rarely poo, they use it as a night nest, for rest and sleeping. If I find some poo there it goes very dry in minutes, so changing that area and filling it up with a handful of fresh dry grass is easy. The full "bedclothes" is changed every week, but checked and repaired daily.

They really accustomed to this "dual area bedding" thing, and keep their bed in relatively clean (makes me very proud).

But next week I will buy a few bales of straw and hay, I will chop it up and it will be their bedding for the autumn and winter when we run out of mowngrass.
A brand new wood storage house is being built just now, so their "silk blankets" we collect from the frontyard grass area will stay dry regardless of weather.
And they can sleep in hay, we are living in an agricultural town so it is an easily affordable luxury for a few ducks.

 

[Paigej]

We are using pine shavings over here for four 5 day old ducklings. Their water is an old sour cream container with the lid cut in half so they can't get into it. We have a pan under the water dish to catch all the water they splash around. It's definitely helping the bedding to stay dry.

 

[333dawn333]

my ducklings ATE the puppy pads !!! it was worse than having nothing. I thought it would be a great idea but not for my little cuties

 

[Duck Drover]

I use a food dehydrator with adjustable temperature as my brooder so I use the food trays with shelf liner over them. To clean up, I remove a tray and replace it with a clean one. I take the dirty tray to the bathtub and I use the handheld showerhead to spray them off. I soak the shelf liners in antibacterial dish soap before reusing them. Under the dehydrator trays I have ice cube trays to contain what goes through the shelf liner and the mesh of the trays. I feed wet food so any that spills gets squished down below along with the duck poop and ends up drying out. I rinse out the dried deposits in the ice cube trays with water and wash them with antibacterial dish soap.

While I clean the trays, the ducklings take a bath. I use a plastic paint tray ($1.50 at Goodwill) as a duckling pond because it has a ramp that prevents any ducklings from drowning. The paint tray is in a plastic tub with a shelf liner so when the ducklings are done with their swim they can dry out on the shelf liner. I get a roll of the shelf liners for $1 at the Dollar Tree but I am able to keep using the same pieces by rinsing and washing them.

 

[ElizabethAnne03]

I have 5 duckings and have switched to puppy pads. It's not going to well. I clean there cage every day but it's like with in one hour there standing in a mixture of pop, pee, water and feed. I have also tried shavings but they stink so bad!

 

[Eban333]

Hey everyone, instead of buying puppy pee pads, buy the bed liners over in the section were the adult diapers are sold! I use those for our chicks and ducklings alone until they are about a week, then they get moved to larger brooders and we do the pads with pine bedding on top. Anyways, the bed liners are cheaper than doggie pee pads!

 

[holysmokinkitty]

Has anyone tried. Shredded coconut husk. We used to have a snake and we used to get these solid blocks of shreddedc coconut husk that would expand insanely and pretty instantly when you added water to them. The stuff took no time to dry after adding the water to expand. Snakes kinda have this per /poop ( I call it a schploop

) thing very much like ducks, so I wonder if this wouldn't be the best thing? I just want.to know if coconut is safe for ducklings or toxic.?I will do more research and get back to you all!but any input would be appreciated!