Ducks are water-hogs...

And, they don't care whose water they 'fowl'. My goats & sheep, though? They CARE! And, so do I. And, I'm tired of wasting all the water. It's bad enough that the ducks' water tub has to be constantly dumped, but when we're also dumping the goat and sheep waterers, because of the ducks, it's a LOT of water, and a LOT of work  especially when you're sick (like I am, at the moment), or injured (like I was half the summer) or need to travel, and hope to find someone to care for your farm (like when John's dad died, in September, and we had to travel for 4 days). I'm tired of it. I simply MUST find a way to keep these birds out of the other livestock tanks when they're free-ranging, or the ducks will have to go - but we REALLY love both the eggs and meat. Ugh.

I decided to search 'teh intarwebz', and discovered that many folks keep wild ducks and geese out of their pools by tossing in floating toys. Who, those toys are all bigger than my tanks, so, I thought of cutting up some pool noodles to float in them. Then, it occurred to me that we still have a whole pool stuck where the wind blew it, down in one of the ravines, that we can't get to, to rescue it & clean up the place - what makes me think small chunks of pool noodles won't suddenly be decorating our woods, in the next small breeze? So, I started rummaging through my stash of what others call trash (much like Pearl's),  and found a small armload (maybe 7 or 8?) of plastic bottles with lids - in various shapes, all about 1qt/ltr in size. I filled each about 1/4 full - to weigh them down in the water a little bit, and took them out to the biggest tank, and threw them in. The ducks were highly offended, as they'd not even had a chance to sully that tank of water, yet. We shall soon see whether it works, against the ducks, but it also occurred to me that with only some water in them, they'll at the very least, keep blowing around on the surface, and maybe help slow the water's freezing a bit, this winter.

Please share your thoughts and ideas, in case this was a wasted effort? Wish me luck!

I'm a duck person and I have observed what you've observed.

I have no idea if your floating bottles will work or not - maybe only short term, so I'm thinking up other options.

Unfortunately, I'm not a "livestock" person, so please take all these outrageous suggestions as a spring-board to ideas that might actually work...
1. put a "lid" on the on the livestock tanks with holes just large enough for them to get their heads through and see if holes that size would make a duck wary enough to go look for water elsewhere.
2. teach your livestock to drink out of hamster bottles on hormones. I'm pretty sure they are available in much larger sizes. Might be cost prohibitive, but if there's some version of "on-demand" water for larger animals, there also might be some way to fake it up.
3. some stock tanks can have a valve installed to drain the water out. We added a long, large diameter pipe to ours that I could move around so that at least the fouled water, (or is that fowled?) was put where it could do the most good.

I absolutely understand your situation. Filling duckie buckets could easily be my full time job during our summer droughts. Hopefully your water bottle trick will help, and if not, maybe someone who knows more about livestock can give you some other options!

Jay Angler wrote: 1. put a "lid" on the on the livestock tanks with holes just large enough for them to get their heads through and see if holes that size would make a duck wary enough to go look for water elsewhere.

I saw an example of this somewhere, but of course, can't find it, now, and it's my next course of action, if/after the water bottles fail.

Jay Angler wrote:2. teach your livestock to drink out of hamster bottles on hormones. I'm pretty sure they are available in much larger sizes. Might be cost prohibitive, but if there's some version of "on-demand" water for larger animals, there also might be some way to fake it up.

I used to have a brass one set up on the house spigot for my husky/chow mix, who was utterly terrified of being indoors. It worked great for him - not so sure of a quick wash to rig one now, but I do have an idea (thank you!) For making something like a livestock 'chicken cup', once it warms up, in spring. But, it will take some patience, fiddling, and several days of nice weather, so... I hope one of the first 2 ideas work, at least until then!

Jay Angler wrote:3. some stock tanks can have a valve installed to drain the water out. We added a long, large diameter pipe to ours that I could move around so that at least the fouled water, (or is that fowled?) was put where it could do the most good.

My tanks actually have drain valves, but the duck poop keeps combining with the oak leaves that all the critters & wind keep dragging into the water, to clog up the valve, so cleaning the valves is actually part of the additional work load. 😭😭😭

Jay Angler wrote:I absolutely understand your situation. Filling duckie buckets could easily be my full time job during our summer droughts. Hopefully your water bottle trick will help, and if not, maybe someone who knows more about livestock can give you some other options!

I'm truly hoping to line up a few more 'plans' - namely 'C', 'D', 'E', and maybe even 'F'. Part of the struggle is that I can't decide whether the goats and sheep are smart or stupid, because in some ways, they REALLY are not helping matters. If I use takes low enough for the babies to reach, the adults poop in them. I have to keep the water tanks far away from the hay mangers & minerals, or they drag those things into them... Raising livestock is most definitely NOT for wusses.

That water is some of the best fertilizer one could ask for, so I would try to make it easy to drain onto garden beds or woodchip piles or woodchip paths between beds.

Ben Zumeta wrote:That water is some of the best fertilizer one could ask for, so I would try to make it easy to drain onto garden beds or woodchip piles or woodchip paths between beds.

If I were to attempt to use even half the water these ducks 'fowl', in my gardens, the plants would all rot. I do use what I can for the gardens, from the troughs, but there is not only far too much water, but my gardens are not convenient to the goat/ sheep paddocks. I'm trying to reduce my work load, because... well if I don't, I'll end up having to eliminate my ducks.

Carla Burke wrote:If I were to attempt to use even half the water these ducks 'fowl', in my gardens, the plants would all rot. I do use what I can for the gardens, from the troughs, but there is not only far too much water, but my gardens are not convenient to the goat/ sheep paddocks.

The tank I was draining through a pipe was up-hill from my Dulcis Bamboo patch. Ben's suggestion may not help immediately, but if you think long term of where tanks can live and where water loving plants can be encouraged nearby, it could help with other things. Growing either firewood or tree hay comes to mind.

And wrote:

I'm trying to reduce my work load, because... well if I don't, I'll end up having to eliminate my ducks.

Essential short term thinking. I'm about ready to ditch ducks for a few years due to poor infrastructure also, but I'd miss the meat they provide. Just remember that eliminating ducks doesn't have to be a forever thing. I *really* want to get an area of our land cleared of brush and Himalayan Blackberry so I can get a mini edible forest planted and mostly independent. If I have to eliminate ducks in the short term to free up the time/energy to do that, it might be short term pain for long term gain, particularly because I've got 4 baby apple trees and 2 baby fig trees that will probably share their overripe fruit with some of those birds!

I appreciate your ideas, Ben & Jay, and I understand - and hope these ideas can help someone else. But, without going into all the reasons why I can't simply drain to a garden, I'll just say that the immovable infrastructure, sun/shade, and topography of the property aren't conducive to it. The barn & paddocks can't be moved. There's no place downhill from the barn, for gardens.

This is also our 3rd try with ducks, and if they don't lay (they're mutts - we have no idea whether they will, or not, other than the 2 we know of that hatched these), they may all be eaten. We love the meat. I love the eggs. But, I'm not so sure, if I can't solve this issue, that we will try again, with a pure-bred laying breed, like I want to do. At some point of losses (in this case, my health cannot take this workload), a wise person often has to decide whether to keep fishin' or cut bait. I hope not to be forced into that position - I like fishin'.

On a happier note, the ducks - so far - do seem at least a bit put off by the floating bottles & jugs, but the goats and sheep do not. That's a WIN! If this loses its effectiveness, I'll try switching up the floaties, to keep the ducks put off. In the meantime, I'm going to see about getting some lumber and insulation, for building a cover/ surround for the biggest tank, and just put 2 or 3 livestock head sized holes in the top, to:
a. Keep the ducks out
b. Minimize leaf litter & debri (aka livestock poop!)
c. Slow the water from freezing
d. Slow the rate of evaporation
e. Increase our chances/duration of keeping these crazy, beloved critters (& getting more Muskovys!)

Lids will definitely work. One of my neighbors has been using trough set up with one head size whole for years. They will take turns and he only gets a vary small amount of debri in the tanks. It also dramatically cuts down on the algae as well.

He made his out of metal and folded it around the tank and put a few small bolts through to hold in place.

Ironically my other neighbor did a setup like this for his dog trough because dog acted like a duck nonstop so he now has his drinking trough with lid  and 2-3 he can sit in with no lid.

Joe Hallmark wrote:Lids will definitely work. One of my neighbors has been using trough set up with one head size whole for years. They will take turns and he only gets a vary small amount of debri in the tanks. It also dramatically cuts down on the algae as well.

He made his out of metal and folded it around the tank and put a few small bolts through to hold in place.

Ironically my other neighbor did a setup like this for his dog trough because dog acted like a duck nonstop so he now has his drinking trough with lid  and 2-3 he can sit in with no lid.

Hi, Joe! Thank you!! My one concern with this one - maybe you can help me with it - my goats have horns. I'm not worried about the bucks, because their horn-span is too wide to get in the hole, but the babies & does, on the other hand, have shorter horns, flatter to their heads. Do you know if there is... I don't know - a maximum size I can make the holes, that will still discourage the ducks? For example, I've not *seen* any ducks in the 5gal buckets, but I have seen them in the red cattle-mineral tubs. In fact, we've had to rescue several ducks from the mineral tubs, because they're big enough to get into, but apparently not always easy to
get out of - especially after they've splashed some water out of them.

This is a thread about the system I set up at our former property:

https://permies.com/t/75626/Hugel-Chinampas-duckoponic-swales

It was indeed many tons of work to establish, and had daily chores necessary to keep our muscovies. The gardens were very fertile around the woodchip and woody debris paths that absorbed the duck pond overflow running through perforated pipe to mini swales in between beds and into keyholes. I never saw signs of burning or rot, but these were hugel beds with woody debris embedded between in the paths. Still, Carla’s reasons are similar to why we do not have ducks now at our new place where they would undoubtedly seek out our pond above our drinking water spring.

We are in an area with excessive winter water (100+” per yer) and abundant woody debris to work with to absorb the ducks’ manure. We may try them again at some point as our property could use the fertility, and ducks have the best manure in my experience (highest Phosphorus to N ratio of any common farm animal, and it does not burn plants as ducks have evolved to help plants grow around their ponds for food and shelter). They are a lot of work though, and are little feathered dragons that abuse each other and chickens if kept too confined together. I  will only get them again though if I can get a really good setup for these problems mentioned above.

Agreed, Ben! The struggle is REAL!! Our land is also all rocks and heavy clay - so the icky water mostly just runs down to the (inaccessible) pond that the wildlife use (which does provide us some lovely hunting opportunities), or it puddles, and ALL the critters just keep tracking it where we walk, then we and the dogs bring it in the house🤢🤮. I haven't completely given up on building our soil, but I'm VERY close, and do the vast majority of my gardening in raised beds or containers.

I have a friend whose thing is ducks. She bought land that turned out to be glacial rocks/gravel with a thin thin skin of pine needles.  She has fruit trees planted as future dividers for long thin rotational fields. As she plants the trees, one at a time due to money, she has a couple of those cheap shallow baby wader pools. The ducks are happy with 3-4 inches and the pools are easy to dump by that treeling & move (while empty) to the next little tree. We have dry summers which are getting hotter. She started with rapid draining "soil".  This may not work for everyone but after 4 years she actually has soil and happy ducks. She does have a well with good water pressure. The trick for her situation is to move each yucky dump to a new spot, and she does have the tall stock troughs that the ducks can't seem get into.

leigh gates wrote:The trick for her situation is to move each yucky dump to a new spot, and she does have the tall stock troughs that the ducks can't seem get into.

Yes - that's the key thing and it takes time.

There are various sizes of stock tanks and various breeds of ducks. Muscovy can get into just about anything, and the trick is getting out again if the water is too far below the lip. I have Khaki Campbells and most of them needed a ramp to get into a tank that was about 1 ft tall - maybe a little taller. I also had a brick or rock that I'd put in as a stepstool in case someone struggled to get out. Ducks can and do drown if they get into a water source and can't get out.

The 3" of water only would make things lighter to dump. Unfortunately I have occasional "helpers" who fill my tanks and buckets to the tip top, despite my objections. "But they like it sooo... much" - yeah - nothing like a very full bucket or duckie bathtub to attract immediate attention, which the ducks promptly displace half of!

Does your friend also give the ducks buckets of deeper water? I soak wheat and put it in a bucket for them to dunk their heads in. This cleans their eyes and nasal areas, which is important, and the soaked wheat is a good source of B-vitamins which ducks need.

Hopefully I didn't miss someone else suggesting this, but when you swap in those plastic containers? Put brine in them instead of water. And then maybe seal the lids with aquarium-grade silicone, to prevent leaks.

It takes more to freeze brine, and should help keep spaces open whenever the tops of the water tanks freeze over.

Have the ducks been cooperating with your attempts to keep them out of the Goat water? Are holes large enough for the bucks, also large enough to attract the ducks?

I always like updates because I've had some situations where a fix seems to work... until the little bird-brains engage those brains and figure out they can defeat the fix!

I can certainly understand the struggles you're facing. I have some geese and ducks that I'm more than ready to send to freezer camp!

I've been having good success with floating the bottles, to keep the ducks out. They really don't like getting in the water with floaties, and the goats couldn't care less. The floaties have another advantage, too - I use small bundles of barley straw, to help keep the water clean. The barley bundles will sink, on their own, as soon as they get water-logged, but they need to float, to treat the water better & longer. So, now, I'm tying a bundle to a floatie-bottle, which keeps the bottle from blowing out and keeps the bundle from sinking - no ducks, cleaner water, no bottles blowing away or even getting accidentally knocked out by the goats - win-win-win!