City Boy Needs To Know About Hay

[catjac1975]

My ducks have a small dog house for shelter. I would like to put some bedding inside to make it more comfortable for them. Living in a city I don't have many choices where I can buy supplies, Tractor supply seems to have what I need. I was a little overwhelmed with the amount of different hays everything from Timothy to alfalfa, straw to mixed. What is best to use for bedding

Straw is used for bedding. But anything will do. Do they eat hay? You might think instead of using wood shavings as bedding. It is easy to shovel when cleaning, absorbs the waste and will decompose faster in compost that any hay or straw.

 

[Nyboy]

I kind of had in my head they would be same work as the hens I had.

 

[catjac1975]

I kind of had in my head they would be same work as the hens I had.

Isn't it just 2 ducks?I thin it will be the same. My neighbor has a few ducks that are housed in the same place as her hens. They free range all day and get locked up at night. She is on the river as I am. Wild ducks in the neighborhood hang out with her ducks. Sometimes there are 40-50 ducks. I am guessing that they do because of the feed. They stop traffic all day long. It is a scenic country road so it does not seem as if people mind stopping for the ducks to cross.

 

[so lucky]

Where my folks retired, local sausage maker put straw in his product. Yuck.....but cheap filler.

I have heard that the "cellulose" that is put in shredded cheese is sawdust. It is supposedly to aid in preventing the cheese from clumping, but...

 

[Beekissed]

I kind of had in my head they would be same work as the hens I had.

The clean out times are accelerated with ducks. Their poops are always liquid and they scatter a lot of water around when they eat, rinse after eating, swim, etc. The bedding gets soaked and stinky faster than with chickens. And ducks don't scratch the mess into the bedding, so it's all on the top and they track through it and then into the water, so anything that sticks to their feet goes into the water and contaminates it quickly.

Nothing like chickens. If they were free ranged, most of that mess would take place out on the grass and you'd not have such a tough problem but when penned it's a constant struggle to keep them clean and dry, the water and food fresh.

You could try a varied, layered deep litter in the pen/run and something easier where they sleep and nest, such as the straw or wood shavings. In the run you could build it deep so the moisture is wicked into the bottom layers like a sponge, but that takes a little time and some working knowledge of cultivated deep litter to reach that zen spot.

 

[baymule]

I raised 20 ducks for the freezer once. I dumped bags of leaves in their pen when it got nasty, which was often. I used 42 bags of leaves! After the ducks left for freezer camp, I turned the chickens in the duck pen, which they enjoyed scratching everything up. Then I planted corn in it and got a good crop!

 

[Beekissed]

That's a lot of leaves. I don't think I use that many for a whole year in my chicken coop!

But, that was a lot of ducks in one place...LOTS of wet, stinky poops.

 

[baymule]

That's a lot of leaves. I don't think I use that many for a whole year in my chicken coop!

But, that was a lot of ducks in one place...LOTS of wet, stinky poops.

They were VERY messy! Adorable when babies, but that didn't last long!

 

[canesisters]

I'm thrilled to see that I'm not the only one using feed bags as building materials.

My coop door is 4x8 and covered in hardware cloth (rat wire). When it snows, I cover it in feed bags to keep the snow from blowing in.

 

[Nyboy]

My plan is to move then to fresh grass every week. They are in a cheap dog run with hardware cloth top. I bought the run new form home depot is very lite weight. With a friend I should have no trouble moving a few feet