Duck poo

[tessandherducks]

Hi, one of my 9 week old Muscovy ducklings has strange poo which I only noticed this morning, does anyone have any advise or suggestions on why it looks like this, or is this normal?

 

[Miss Lydia]

What are you feeding including treats? Do they have access to head washing buckets or bowls?
It looks like watery poop with bits of solid food whatever he was eating. which is pretty normal since ducks drink a lot of water.
How is the duckling acting? Full of energy, eating good. Do they go out and forage?

 

[Plague]

Do they have access to the outside? Other than not a whole lot of matter, the color looks like when mine are digging mud holes. Mine go from real watery like this depending how much water they are drinking, which they are so often drinking it is pretty normal for mine to be real watery. I use to worry about it, but now I have realized it is just normal. They are not in the water as much it is more dry looking. I have noticed if I sit out with them most the day it is a lot less watery to just barely moist looking. I only have about 5 months of hands on with them, so not real experienced. But I’ve come to figure if they are acting normal, I shouldn’t be worried. The color seems to directly correlate to what they are doing/eating. They graze a ton, it looks more green, digging holes, more like a black, their feed more the color of feed, and then just depends on how much water they are drinking on the moisture contents. I probably wouldn’t worry as long as they are not acting differently or something personally. I have seen to worry about diarrhea, but I really don’t know how you would determine it was that over normal, as it is typically fairly runny in my experience. When I first let mine free in the yard I was quite concerned because they had more of a black looking poop, but I spent a lot of time with them observing what they did, I was able to correlate when they was mudding it was very dark to nearly if not black, foraging in the grass some shade of green, feed a brown, and the water content varies from like that to a really dry look depending on how much they are drinking and playing in their water.

 

[tessandherducks]

What are you feeding including treats? Do they have access to head washing buckets or bowls?
It looks like watery poop with bits of solid food whatever he was eating. which is pretty normal since ducks drink a lot of water.
How is the duckling acting? Full of energy, eating good. Do they go out and forage?

They are still on unmedicated chick crumb and for treats they get straw errors and mealworms, they do have access to head washing buckets, and he is acting normal and full of energy he is eating well and they are able to forage outside

 

[tessandherducks]

They are still on unmedicated chick crumb and for treats they get straw errors and mealworms, they do have access to head washing buckets, and he is acting normal and full of energy he is eating well and they are able to forage outside

Strawberry's not straw errors lol

 

[Plague]

They are still on unmedicated chick crumb and for treats they get straw errors and mealworms, they do have access to head washing buckets, and he is acting normal and full of energy he is eating well and they are able to forage outside

Since you are feeding chick crumbles, I would consider getting some type of niacin supplement, either some brewers yeast or some vitamin/electrolyte that has niacin in it. Just as a preventative of any issues with niacin deficiency. When I fed my first ducklings the chick starter I ended up needing to supplement, and it took quite a while for them to get back on track. Now I use food formulated for ducks, with niacin, but keep them both on hand, and occasionally will give them some of each, as I have even heard of people having the issue with even food formulated for ducks. If you have the resources to get it I would recommend it, even though you are not having issues right now, that way you won’t be rushing trying to source it if you do need some.

 

[Miss Lydia]

Nutritional Yeast is a great way to give them niacin just sprinkle 1 Tab per cup of feed.

 

[ruthhope]

They are still on unmedicated chick crumb and for treats they get straw errors and mealworms, they do have access to head washing buckets, and he is acting normal and full of energy he is eating well and they are able to forage outside

Then all is well!

 

[tessandherducks]

Since you are feeding chick crumbles, I would consider getting some type of niacin supplement, either some brewers yeast or some vitamin/electrolyte that has niacin in it. Just as a preventative of any issues with niacin deficiency. When I fed my first ducklings the chick starter I ended up needing to supplement, and it took quite a while for them to get back on track. Now I use food formulated for ducks, with niacin, but keep them both on hand, and occasionally will give them some of each, as I have even heard of people having the issue with even food formulated for ducks. If you have the resources to get it I would recommend it, even though you are not having issues right now, that way you won’t be rushing trying to source it if you do need some.

thankyou, will do, this is really helpful