Water
Maintaining a clean supply of water is very important when keeping ducks.
Our 5 birds often go through several gallons a day. Not only do they spill quite a bit, but because they wash their food down with water when they eat, the water quickly becomes murky with dirt and food and needs to be changed.
For our small flock, we like to use a simple self-filling dog water bowl. The ducks need to be able to get their entire bill into the water so we have found this type of bowl to be extremely convenient, holding enough water for a whole day. Unfortunately, the thing still needs to be cleaned at least once a day or it gets pretty disgusting. We are hoping to come up with a larger and more effective duck waterer when we expand our flock.
Rotational Grazing
We actually graze our ducks rotationally on what is essentially a large lawn. This means that the ducks rely on the grass for much of their nutrition in addition to their feed and greens from our vegetable garden. This is very nutritious for them and returns Nitrogen to our deficient soil in the form of duck waste and spilled feed. For our small flock of 5 ducks, we find that if we move the run every 4 to 5 days, the ducks have a positive, greening effect on the lawn. Any longer than that and the grass gets damaged and can start to turn into a mud pit (photo).