Can You Potty Train a Duck? (Answered)

Remarkably, few people kept ducks as pets, but nowadays, many households have one or more ducks. People keep ducks for various purposes, and undoubtedly, they make great pets. They are affordable, and easy to maintain but messy because they poop after every few minutes. So, they need potty training from their duckling stage. But you potty train a duck?

Well, Ducks lack sphincter muscles, and therefore they have zero control over their defecation. That is why most duck owners use duck diapers to control the frequent poop. However, you can still potty train ducks.

Let’s find out how.

Steps for Potty Training Ducks

Potty training ducks is tough and not for the faint-hearted. Ducks, from the moment they get hatched, cannot control their defecation. As a result, ducklings poop after almost every five minutes while following their parents and owners around. So that means they leave poop everywhere they go.

You can potty train a duck by letting it poop in a specific location. However, the process can frustrate you and take a long time than expected. Behavioral scientists state that there are various ways to stop impossible behaviors from animals with unteachable traits like ducks.

List Down Your Duck Behaviors and curb its diet

Ducks have different behaviors depending on the living environment. For example, a duck that lives alone behaves differently than a duck raised alongside other ducks. Caged ducks act differently from ducks left to move freely in the compound.

So, list the behaviors of every duck you keep in your yard to learn about their behaviors. Then, after a proper study, you can begin working on every duck’s behavior, affecting the other ducks as time goes by. One or two ducks’ behaviors can change other ducks’ behaviors because they copy each other in the long run.

Like any other pet, the best time to start potty training your ducks is when they are still ducklings. At this stage, it is easy to monitor a duckling’s behavior and teach it new ways before it adapts to significant duck behaviors. So, the first thing to do to a duckling as part of potty training is by restricting its diet.

Teach your duckling to stay hungry sometimes without causing malnutrition. Hunger helps your ducklings to adapt to certain behaviors, especially if there is a food reward afterward. For example, this method allows the duckling to poop less. However, don’t starve your duckling too much to the extent of destroying its health.

Teach Them Good Behaviors, Separate Their Feeding Spots and Cage Them

Your ducklings and ducks need the motivation to adapt to a specific location for pooping. So, think of a technique to rue them to move to the segregated spot for pooping. For example, you form a habit of rewarding every duck that goes to that spot to poop.

However, this can take much of your time, which requires a lot of patience. So, instead, give the ducks more significant rewards if they poop at the right place always. With time, they will adapt to this with anticipation of getting something in return.

Ducks often poop where their food is located. So, it is essential to place ducks feeding troughs at specific spots to attract them. That means that your ducks will adapt to pooping near their feeding place. However, this is a tricky potty-training method because ducks are busybodies and like moving from one place to another.

You can get a feeder at a great price on Amazon:

Another great technique of potty-training ducks is building a large open cage for them in your yard. First, make the cell big enough for ducks to walk from corner to corner. Then, separate the cage into two sections. Let one side comprise its swimming pool and its feeding place, which will also act as its pooping place. This way, you can have the chance to potty training your ducks quickly.

You can get this open and spacious cage from Amazon to use in your yard:

A cage also helps you train the ducks where they can spend their night. It also makes it easy for you to keep your ducks clean since you can easily clean the ducks’ waste.

Final Thoughts

Now that you are familiar with potty-training ducks, keep some part of your pet family. Remember, ducks are friendly birds, and they make beautiful additions to your poultry. In addition, they are cheap to buy as well as maintain, although they need much of your time to feed and maintain a clean environment for them.