Raising Ducks
Basics
Duckling diary
Management
Housing
Eggs
Links/Resources
Movies
and please note:
Winter care for ducks
As the weather grew colder we made some adjustments to our housing and management. They do not seem to mind the cold; they do fluff up their feathers and huddle together to sleep on cold nights, but the first thing they do every morning is to jump into their pool—even if we have to break up floating ice first to let them in. They also eat more, of course, to keep warm, but since they began laying at the beginning of fall, we don't know how much of the extra food is due to the cold and how much to the egg production.
Daytime care
For winter we park the grazing pen at the
back of the yard and use dry leaves for daytime bedding.
By late October the grass had stopped coming
back after the ducks trampled it, and because they spill so much water
from their pool and waterer, the ducks quickly turn any bare patch of
ground on which they are confined into permanent mud. That's not good
for the ducks or the yard, so we parked their pen and laid down a layer
of wheat straw (which we use for nighttime bedding). They so quickly mucked
up the straw, though, that I switched to dry leaves raked from the rest
of the yard to save money and time.
About once a week I add about a six-inch
layer of fresh leaves, which quickly breaks down with rain, slopped water,
and manure. Every month or so I rake out all the leaves, cart them to
the compost bin, and start fresh.
The ducks seem perfectly happy with the
leaves, even when they are mostly pine needles. Rooting in freshly raked
leaves for wintering insects gives them something to do when they can't
graze.
Nighttime care
In the summer we rake out the ducks' bedding from their night
pen every two to three weeks to keep the flies away, but in the winter
we simply pile on fresh wheat straw, letting the old bedding start to
break down underneath. The extra several inches of straw provides some
extra warmth.
To provide a windbreak, we draped 6-mil
plastic sheeting to cover one exposed side of the pen. We also stacked
bales of straw three high to provide a "cubby" for them; on
cold nights, they sleep in a pile at the back of the cubby.
We have read that ducks are fine without special shelter at temperatures down to 0 degrees Fahrenheit; we were skeptical of this, but they do seem fine on mornings when the temperature dips to the teens, which is as cold as it normally gets in our part of North Carolina. Their behavior remains normal, and we have not seen them shivering, which we hear ducks will do in extreme cold.
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