Duck eye health question

[Nao57]

So there's something I've been wanting to ask about...

Yesterday I went out to see the ducks and work with them. Its colder now and because of fears of freezing pipes the city shuts the outside of the house water off in winter. This makes it harder to move water out to the animals. So I have to do it by hand with buckets. Its time consuming... (Although I really like the animals, they are fun. So I don't regret it.)

But yesterday when picking up some of the ducks to figure out which one will be Thanksgiving Dinner, I was feeling around their head to calm them and noticed that the feathers behind and near their eyes gets crusty sometimes. Its like its sort of glued hard with the feather stuff matted by dried goop whatever...

This brought a ton of questions right off the bat.

*To be clear the duck wasn't sick. And it didn't look like it was hurting or injured.*

But I don't know if its healthy for this buildup of the dried goop or not? And maybe its nothing, because it could happen naturally when there's not a lot of swimming water available (but yes has drinking water).

How much of this is normal? I would think most people have ducks with this around the eyes as its not possible for everyone to have a pool and pond of water all the time for their animals.

But I also wonder if this dried stuff around the eyes could potentially cause infection or illness eventually if they don't have a chance to rinse it? Or...I'm not even sure what to ask, I hope people can post and reply about this topic to gather information on it.

And maybe some of you will benefit from it also.

I do try to take good care of my ducks. I feed them 3 times a day when I could feed them only once or twice. I try to be careful about listening if they cry out for something. So I don't believe I'm neglecting anything. But I don't want to take any chances, and thought I should ask about this.

Thank you ahead of time.

 

[rachels.haven]

Does your flock get a fresh "dunk bucket" at least once, maybe twice a day to clean out their nares and sinuses? It's probably not illness, but you are correct, it can turn into one. It sounds like a lack of head dunking. Bucket needs to be at least the depth of their heads and big enough to give all the ducks a turn.

Once I had a mentally impaired duck I kept for the kids to love on. She swim didn't dunk her head ever. Her eyes crusted and clouded over as a result. The fix was to manually flush her eyes and antibiotic ointment because she would not do it herself. You duck will probably improve with twice daily fresh water buckets if they don't have it because yours is not mentally impaired and should be willing to clean its own nose and sinuses out.

 

[rachels.haven]

Here, I think some of these ducks have the eye condition you're talking about (if your eyes are sharp you can spot them). I believe in the breeder houses their watering system is not deep enough, but they have to balance that with keeping the eggs clean and dry. The duck on the center left by the play button.