Duck hygiene question in winter

[Nao57]

So I wanted to see what you thought about this.

My ducks look really dirty.

The outside water the city shuts off in winter, for fear of the pipes bursting or whatever. So we only have in the house water. (They call it pressurized irrigation and I guess part of the worry is if its already got more pressure than normal it can freeze easier.)

Anyway this makes hauling water to the ducks very difficult in winter.

So setting out a kiddy pool for them to clean off in is pretty difficult if not impossible.

I'm curious to ask what some of you have done in the same situation? Any suggestions?

Technically they aren't dying and I'm keeping the normal water buckets pretty clean but just there isn't tons of surplus water so they are looking pretty gross.

 

[The_V's]

some will say that as long as they can dunk their heads in water to clean out their noses you'll be fine. I have found that's not entirely true. They need a little water to clean out their cloaca once in a while or they will stop laying until spring time almost entirely. Give them a baby pool at least once a week so they can wash their naughty bits and keep laying eggs for you. Also up their protein intake if your egg count is till down after giving them back a pool once or twice a week.
hope that helps

 

[Nao57]

some will say that as long as they can dunk their heads in water to clean out their noses you'll be fine. I have found that's not entirely true. They need a little water to clean out their cloaca once in a while or they will stop laying until spring time almost entirely. Give them a baby pool at least once a week so they can wash their naughty bits and keep laying eggs for you. Also up their protein intake if your egg count is till down after giving them back a pool once or twice a week.
hope that helps

Interesting. Thank you very much.

 

[Finnie]

The outside water the city shuts off in winter,

I’m curious how this works. Seems like you would have to have two separate lines for water if the city can shut one off but not the other. And do they turn it off for the whole city at the main water plant, or do they have to go around to all the different neighborhoods and turn off at multiple different places?

And how do they decide the shut off and turn on dates? I find this extremely strange, since I’ve never lived anywhere that did this. Maybe it’s a common thing in very northern areas? The farthest north I’ve ever lived is Detroit. We just had one water meter tracking water coming in so they could bill us. I think there were shutoff valves in the basement we could turn off if we were worried about the outdoor spigot pipe bursting.

There is no general location in your profile, but I’m guessing it’s not very far south.