The past week was the first week of real winter with overnight temperatures down to -24°F and daytime highs only in the low single digits and windchill temps to -45°F. During the coldest of those days neither duck nor chicken came outside, not even once. Would you? But now that we are past the Winter Solstice and are headed into spring and Real Winter has for the moment disappeared with highs of 40°F above zero it was important to clean out the Duck Manger because ducks are messy, dirty, play in water, poop anywhere creatures....two days of inside all the time ducks leaves the Manger a solid frozen ducky mat. When it is this cold I just add 3 or 4 inches of straw over the top every other day so that my ducks don't freeze to the floor....So with the coming of Spring yesterday I threw open the doors and windows and shooshed all the ducks into the sunshine.....

and went about with wheelbarrow and hay fork and snow shovel (you gotta get to the compost heap somehow) and in about 3 hours managed to get the floor in the Manger back down to mostly dirt

and leaving the door and window open finally got the interior defrosted (8 days of frozen duckbreath had frost on the walls an inch thick)

The cold week of weather cut egg production in half for both the ducks and the chickens making everyotherday ducks and chickens out of them.

When the weather is not brutal cold the ducks spend most of their time in the sunshine by the pool. They are good creatures these ducks. We likes them.