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Ducks aren’t complicated animals- they’ll be happy with a little shack in your yard with a bowl of water and a pan of feed. But, just because they’re easy to please, doesn’t mean their aren’t duck care tips that will make your and their lives easier.
Learn tips to keep your duck yard cleaner, your ducks well hydrated, help ducklings grow strong, and more!
Use Compressed Bedding Pellets in the Duck Yard
If you’re like many duck owners, your duck yard is a mud pit in spring because the ducks have killed all the grass and played in the mud.
The mud seems to be a persistent, never-ending problem for days after each rain.
Of course, there are effective, permanent ways to drain water and control mud. But most of these methods are expensive, take tons of time, or both. If you need a quick way to control mud after a fresh rainfall, compressed bedding pellets might just be the solution you’re looking for!
Compressed bedding pellets are fine wood shavings that have been pressed into pellets that expand on contact with water.
To use compressed bedding pellets in duck runs, sprinkle a few handfuls of pellets in areas prone to puddles and let them work! Be aware that the pellets will expand to many times their original size, so you don’t need to cover the ground to soak up all the water.
This duck care tip helps control water and absorb droppings to control smells. As a bonus, you can scrape layers of mud-and-manure-ridden bedding pellets to make fantastic compost!
Duck Care Tip to Save Your Back by Using a Sled for Water Buckets in the Winter
Owning ducks is a fun and enjoyable hobby for most of the year… except Winter.
As soon as temperatures dip below freezing, we duck owners must resign ourselves to months of hauling heavy pales of water to the duck house multiple times a day. It’s a huge chore that takes extra time makes feeding much harder.
Using a sled is a great duck care tip that will make your winter water transportation so much easier!
A good sled will slide easily across the ground, securely carry at least three 5-gallon pales, and have a comfortable durable handle.
You should avoid flexible foam sleds, anything without sides, and sleds that are circular. Round sleds aren’t space efficient for carrying buckets and you won’t get as much bang for your buck.
This is the sled that I use. It easily fits three 5-gallon buckets, is slippery and slides easily, and doesn’t dump your buckets off even around corners and over snowdrifts.
Get it Here: https://amzn.to/3732zOe
Use the Deep Litter Method to Keep Things Clean
Did you know that each of your ducks could produce 8 pounds of manure each month?
Since they produce so much waste, cleaning up after your ducks will be the single most time-consuming duck chore you’ll have to deal with.
You might feel overwhelmed by the idea of cleaning up after your ducks every day, but you can make life much easier by using the deep litter method. Using the deep litter method is a great duck care tips because you’ll only need to change your ducks’ bedding a handful of time PER YEAR!
No more weekly or monthly cleanout. The deep litter method is a set and forget it solution to duck waste that keeps your coop clean and warm and produces great compost!
Learn more about the deep litter method HERE.
Hey! Great tips are – well, great! But they’re only one side of the coin. So, after you’re done learning these tips, go make sure that you aren’t making any of these duck care mistakes.
Make Easy No-Poo Drinkers Out of Pales
Here’s the thing about ducks – they love to have fun in water. And they don’t care if the water is supposed to be drinking water or swimming water. So, it can be hard to keep drinking water clean for your ducks; because, given half a chance, they’ll swim in it.
And for ducklings, it can be especially difficult to keep them out of their drinkers. They’re so small, they’ll bathe in just about anything!
So this duck care tip is to DIY your own easy no-poo duck drinkers to keep your ducklings (and ducks) out of their drinking water to keep it cleaner.
All you need to do is cut holes in some pales – I used 3-gallon pales because they were free – but you can use any size you like. Cut the holes low enough that ducklings can easily get their heads and necks in, but not so low they can crawl into.
When I made mine, I used a utility knife to cut rectangular holes. But you could use a Sawzall, Hole saw bits and a Dremel, or any other tool that will safely do the job.
Since they’re easy to make, I made a series of buckets with holes at different heights to accommodate ducklings of all ages.
For Adult Ducks, Use a Swimming Cover to Keep Ducks Out of Drinking Water
When it comes to adult ducks, a five-gallon pale might not hold enough water to keep them hydrated. Naturally, you’ll graduate your ducks to a bigger water feeder. But a bigger water feeder makes it even harder to keep ducks out of their drinking water.
I like to use small livestock troughs. They provide a large enough volume of water to keep my ducks hydrated while also providing deep enough water for them to rinse their nostrils out.
But in my ducks’ eyes, that water trough is a pool.
So my simple solution is this swimming cover. And you can easily make a swim cover for any size trough to keep your ducks hydrated and out of their drinking water!
Dip Your Ducklings’ Bills Before They Go Into the Brooder
Ducklings are tiny and pretty fragile, but one way to help your ducklings (or chicks) get off to a great start is by dipping their bills in water as you put them in their brooder.
If you buy your chicks from a mail-order hatchery or hatch them yourself, your chicks will have never eaten or drank anything. So it’s important to teach them where and what their water is.
If your ducklings came from a feed store or breeder, it’s likely that they’ve already eaten and drank. But it’s still a good idea to show the ducklings where to drink from. Any sort of travel or a new environment can stress ducklings out and they might not immediately eat or drink.
So, in my opinion, this duck care tip is essential to make sure your ducklings stay alive and healthy!
To dunk their bills, all you need to do is grasp them in one hand and tilt them until their bills touch the water. That’s it!
Taking this one simple step as your move your new chicks into their brooder will help make sure they get hydrated and healthy from day one.
TIP: Add a bit of apple cider vinegar, honey, and/or garlic to their water for the first day or two. This mixture gives them a boost of electrolytes and micronutrients to help them be robust, healthy, and strong.
I hope these duck care tips can help your life with ducks move a little smoother. Let me know which of these tips you found the most useful!
Happy Homesteading!
