Does anyone have any ideas for what to lay in a duck/goose pen?

Jonni,

Hi! I'm considering your question, but I'm not really clear about it.

I raised ducks and geese for years while living in New Hampshire, and I know most people raising fowl either cage or pen them, or allow them to free range during the day, penning them at night to guard against wild predators. I'm assuming you are talking about the latter.

In regards to free ranging, geese and ducks alike will forage for whatever they prefer, leaving grasses, certain plants, and certain weeds

alone since they don't like them. However, if you are raising fowl for food, you will want to do a bit of research as to what organic matter to avoid, lest you end up with gamely tasting birds.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by, "Didn't work," since you were not clear as to what you meant.

In raising our fowl, we chose to "lay down" a common fescue/bluegrass mix, with a wide range of reed grasses in the pond/marsh. Duckweed, although detrimental to a pond, is a great, high protein food for fowl. We used to introduce buckets of it into our pond every week.

In the pen we laid down at least four inches of sawdust/woodshavings which we acquired from a local sawmill for free. The sawdust/shavings provided a nice bedding and also inhibited weed/grass growth since wood sawdust or shavings will inhibit organic growth since it robs the underlying soil of nitrogen.

We changed the bedding every three days.

Not sure if thats the answer you wanted, but hope it helps anyway. I'm not preaching, but you really should be more careful to detail your questions in a more informative way before posting them.

Regards,

-Jeeem-

Welcome to owning waterfowl. They love making a big, muddy mess.

They will tear up sod long before it establishes, so you're kind of limited to a couple of options. You may need to temporarily move their fencing, get some good pasture mix, and reseed and let it establish. Geese actually graze really well, but you need established pasture or a really hardy mix. I found a pasture mix from Johnny's seed this year that I love for our animals (sweet mix for goats and sheep - mostly rye, but has other grains and even turnips). All of the animals really seem to like it, and it takes a pretty good beating.

We let our duck flock free range with the chickens on the front 2 acres here (we currently have 20 khaki campbells). Flightless laying breeds don't wander off and do a terrific job of keeping the slugs out of the gardens (although I've learned that they really like swiss chard and basil and I have to fence those beds with chicken wire).

Try fencing off a section of their yard and reseeding it. Move them to that area when it is established, then reseed the rest. Depending on the size of their enclosure, you may have to rotate their pasture and reseed a couple of times each season.

Hope this helps, but ducks and geese love making a mess!

i live on a farm in australia and i own 15 ducks (had 4 but they started breeding) and 5 chickens.

wen we built a pen for the ducks and the chickens, we didnt lay anything there but they were still fine with it.

it was just grass.

I know my aunt used straw. She had a farm and used the same stuff that she did for the horses and the cows. I don't know what kind, because it was a long time ago.

i help out at chicken farm and in all of the barns (three barns with 1,000+ chickens in total) they use cedar wood shavings. it is easer to clean up like most things. it is kinda like kitty litter because it locks together and clumps up making it easy to clean. and i just love the smell of it when it comes right out of the bag.

plz help me?

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=ArQnS...