after showing you my duckling brooder in my last video viewers recommended that i
upgrade my duck waterer and the brooder to a system that's shown on living tradition
homesteads so we'll be exploring that and much more coming up in the grass-fed homestead
viewers dan harkness happy huntress and sandra leishman all recommended that i watch kevin
and sarah's video on living traditions homestead youtube channel about the duck water they use in
their brooders i checked out that video and i was pretty inspired by what i saw uh ducklings well
let's just say they like to make a huge mess out of their waters but we've come up with a way to
at least minimize this uh you're never going to prevent it because they are ducks and they do
want to get in the water so let me show you what we do to minimize the amount of mess
with the duckling waterers now we're going to drill the holes about two and a half or
three inches from the bottom of the waterer so we're gonna take these out one at a time we're
gonna show them where the water is and then we'll move on to the next ones in the box in order to
implement a system like that in my brooder i need to rearrange some things in the homestead first
hi
with as big as the ducks have gotten they've definitely outgrown their brooder their little
brother which is a little small to begin with it worked but it's definitely time to upgrade
they've doubled in size and they're actually really hard to hold on to now
you're fine oh stop the ducklings aren't feathered out yet so they can't be
hey get get up there the ducklings haven't feathered out yet so they're not ready to go on
pasture the plan is to get them out of the little burger we're going to give them the whole birder
which means i need to get these pullets out of here we're also going to be upgrading the ducks
water situation so we're going to give that a shot when we get them in the full brewer so let's get
the pullets out so we can get on it get a bow get it going to put the pullets in the chicken tractor
however we gotta move the chicken tractor first until yesterday afternoon i had our laying hens
in here but i released them yesterday afternoon because i realized i broke one of the rules of
permaculture i didn't put my chickens in zone one this is definitely just outside of zone
one which means i'm walking further to and fro the chickens every day to get the eggs give them water
give them their feed i have two layers of fencing for the garden and everything between the chickens
that so i have to walk all the way around there's no gate going between so it was just becoming a
hassle so i figured i'd release the chickens and then we'll move the tractor and then worry
about getting them back in there later but in the meantime we'll do the pullets the plan is we're
gonna move the chicken tractor just on the other side of this fence here into the garden area so
then i can access it through the garden which is near the front door to the house that'll be a lot
easier and we have a broody hen in here come on girl oh there you go bye-bye look at that
now that we have this in here um do you think this is gonna work because the pig's left behind
um kind of a mess in here and there doesn't seem to be any flat ground well you raise a good point
i hadn't thought of that hmm there's a lot of undulations a lot of holes that the pigs have left
this is where i finished the pigs last year in the fall yeah i think it's just gonna be a little too
uneven to keep the tractor anywhere where there won't be a hole that the chickens can get out of
i have an idea what why don't we just move them back out towards the front of the house where
they were all last year the sheep did a good job of mowing but there's still a lot of big patches
that maybe the chickens could help out with i actually like that idea for more than one reason
come here let me show you why earlier there were flies all over this
so the flies on there are going to lay fly eggs but if we have the chicken tractor over this
and their fly eggs on the manure the chickens are gonna see that as a food
source they're gonna scratch it and eat any kind of maggot growth so that's gonna help control
our fly population and the chickens get some extra protein from it and they're
super close to the house so it's a win-win win good suggestion thank you all right let's do it
poe dameron thinks that the drone is a bird
and he thinks he's a bird dog we have the chicken tractor in place and all set up ready to go
i have my fishnet for capturing chickens we're probably gonna need it so let's get these bullets
no don't play out
we have the pull-ups situated in the chicken tractor it's time to work on the ducklings
and getting them the full brewer and their water system in place so what i saw on living traditions
homestead video was that they used a hole saw drilled holes in the in a plastic tote like this
to fill it up with water and the ducklings could stick their head in the holes and get the water
they need and the water stays in the container so we're going to put that to the test we'll see if
it works that was a big fail the second hall i went to drill cracked all this plastic in here
which it's way too low and hold any water i don't want to use anything to seal this because any kind
of chemical or tape i'd put over this is gonna just add chemicals to the water so i went to drill
subsequent holes just to see if i could get better at doing it without cracking it and it just kept
cracking this one i lowered the speed on the drill see if that helped and it did it didn't crack
and then i did more on the other side at the same speed and it just blew a huge hole in it so
i really don't know what the issue is here i think this thing was like 12 or 14 bucks something like
that so this is not something i want to keep trying to see if it's going to get better
i'm pretty disappointed right now a little frustrated at the cost of this and now it's
completely a waste so we discussed going back to town and getting a new plastic tub um to try this
again but we've really run out of time for the day i couldn't stand to leave the little ducks in the
brooder in the little brooder anymore um i was determined to give them some space to run around
so we decided to use the lid of the broken plastic tub um as a catch for the waterer and just get
them in here for the night and then we'll try again tomorrow with a new watering system i didn't
get to watch the video on the living traditions homestead about the duck water so maybe we'll have
a chance to watch it tonight and see if we missed any helpful tips on how to make that work for us
we're at dan's partner's house now we're having movie night with your roommate and pizza and pizza
but we have to watch that video first the one on the duck water yes three adult ducks here on the
homestead i'll be using for the ducklings is one of these storage containers now i picked
up a three pack of these at walmart for like five or six dollars so i'll use the other two
it looked like he went slower like the drill was going slower but also this tub that he's using
i think might be like a softer plastic oh so we should go somewhere else like walmart yeah so he
said he got him at walmart he got a three pack for five bucks i bought that one for like i don't know
it was like 12 or 14 bucks i can't remember but so it might be like a softer plastic wait a second
you think it's like these uh those are really small right but they make bigger versions of
them it's the same brand if nothing else i think we're going to walmart tomorrow oh my favorite
dan's partner and her roommate went to walmart the next day and picked up the plastic containers
that i needed i just got back from walmart and we went ahead and got the bigger tubs i couldn't find
the pack of three um that were the next size up from this because there's a shortage of plastic
containers but we did find these they're a little bit bigger than the pink ones that i had at home
and so we're going to try drilling holes we've got four tries so hopefully one of them works out
i am going to do the drilling today because maybe i have a more delicate touch
it went really well there's i think a lot of contributing factors this was probably
a different plastic it seemed a lot softer um it got everywhere and shredded like crazy
i just took some sandpaper and sanded around the edges of the hole so there weren't any
plastic shards um i don't want the ducks eating the plastic but also i don't want
it scratching them when they're drinking water because i love them maybe it's just because dan
was too manly and aggressive in his drilling but mostly i think it was the softer plastic
and we're ready to go because i'm too manly i get accused of that all the time
i'm maybe not tall enough to do this
come here come here put your head in there i can't see i'm not tall enough
did you see that try again really you gotta make sure their face touches the water
it did he's not sure about it
come on
once the ducks realize there's water in there then we put the lid on and they'll find the face
they just have to know that they're flattering
go on find it there's water in there guys when i take the lid off
they'll drink out of the top and a few of them have figured out that they can put their head
in the holes but um as soon as we put the lids on it's like they forget water's there entirely
so i'd like to see a couple of them use the new watering system before we leave them see water
it took a while before the ducks got the hang of it but once they did everything worked
pretty well the brother is staying dry and it's relatively clean
thank you to the viewers who recommended living tradition homesteads duck water video and thank
you kevin sarah for putting out such great educational content from which we all can learn
coming up soon on the grass-fed homestead is our mid-year goal check-in we'll also be moving pigs
soon and i'm still working on getting the lambs a bigger mobile sheet pen until then there's this
video here for your viewing pleasure click on it give it a watch and i'll see you over there
you