Clean-up sucks!

I will be so happy when I get these little ones out on a full time basis!  Let me just tell you that if you are raising ducklings from egg from artificial incubation then your house will start to stink after awhile! My wife can't come into my room without gagging now.  I think each one poops every 20 minutes right now except for Naili, wait, I take that back, even her!  I clean out the containers 3 times a day or more. The combination of feces and wet flock starter is horrible to the senses! Ducklings/ducks are messy messy eaters. They dip their bills in the food and then the water. Then they either go back to the food or they sling their bills around flinging west mash everywhere.  Half the food ends up in the water which means I have to clean it out more than 3 times a day. Dumping that sludge(what it looks like at bottom of water bowl) down the sinks starts to make the sinks stink even after rising it all out. Time for bleach!  I'm going to have to start dumping it in the toilet instead.

Lamar, how do you clean the containers they live in? I'll tell ya!  First I have cardboard going completely around the containers to catch the water and stuff that they fling around. this and the containers sit on a large tarp.  In the containers is a large towel or old photography muslin that i sewed up. So most of the poo and food and water ends up there. I get a container of bleach and water and a rag. I have a roll of paper towels. I sit down in front and put a little barricade around me on the tarp and I put my leg on the outside. Now that I got myself barricaded in I take out Naili and put her beside me. She will either get in my lap or peck at the barricade.  I take out her water and food and put it in another container for easy transport to kitchen or bathroom. I start at one end and pull/fold up the towel or muslin and put it in a plastic bag. This is where Naili abandons my lap and goes to trying to eat the plastic bag which I put behind me so she doesn't end up behind me. I use paper towels to get up excess poop and mash along the edges so it doesn't end up in my bleach water. I then go to bleaching the inside, drying the inside and then putting in a clean towel or muslin. If it is morning I will replace with towel on bottom and muslin on top and a little after lunch I simply remove the muslin and leave the towel. Hold Naili a little as she really likes that and then put her back in the container where in 5 minutes she poops. I do the same procedure for the smaller ones. The hardest part is making sure they don't get behind me and try and drink or swim in my bleach water. Also they poop around me so I gotta be careful of that so I cam constantly grabbing a paper towel to wipe the poo around me as I clean. And of course the little ones poop within 5 minutes of going back in their containers. I'll grab a paper towel and get that up. It must stress them out or something. Then I clean any poo off of me (today one pooped under my stump and I got it on my liner. Dammit! I think go and clean their containers and re-feed them. I'll twist the top of the bag so the stench doesn't get out and at night I double wash it all, sometimes triple wash (it's a lot of damn poo!). All of this takes up a lot of time. I could use hay and just lay down a fresh layer every 4 hours and then clean it out in morning outside, but hay really causes my allergies to go nuts so that is not an option.

So now you know what I go through each day. I also miss out on traveling because of them. Nothing like a dog!  If this sounds like something that you don't want to do on a regular basis, then don't incubate any eggs that you find. Just let nature have it's way! I had read everything I could on ducks after I found the first 3 eggs and I knew what was to happen and accepted it.

Good news is I order bird netting last night and it should be here in a week. When that happens I think I will put Naili out in the run full time as she is large enough that the snake, where ever it is hiding, wont eat her. I'm pretty sure she is too big for such a snake. I got a wading pool in there now and I'll add steps in and out soon, it has shade and it is hidden almost completely from view from the road which means the kids will probably leave it alone.

I sure wish I'd see the snake or whatever that is eating the eggs again. My neighbor across the street said they found two in their shrubbery and one small rattlesnake.