Ducks are migrating aquatic animals who eat, swim, dive, clean, and play in water.
In the meat industry these birds cannot fly, cannot swim and some can barely walk. They never see water, except for their drinkers, they cannot preen properly so can barely keep warm.

About 3 billion ducks a year are raised for slaughter and egg production.

These miserable, essentially wild, dejected creatures, struggle around the huge, dark, stinking, dirty, ammonia filled, barren shed, where they are imprisoned for life. Up to 10,000 ducks are jammed into one shed.
Denied of their basic aquatic needs, the ducks waddle through their piled-up feces sodden litter. There is no sun, no water and no fresh air, just constant artificial lighting. Unsurprisingly, many become diseased and die in the crowded sheds.

Poultry scientists have 'perfected' the industrial duck by selective breeding and engineered very fast growth rates so that the ducks’ brief period of life offers the maximum for their exploiters.

They can barely walk, some fall on their backs and cannot turn back over, get knocked over by others and are often unable to manage themselves. Even when put back on their feet it takes some time to reorient themselves. In the packed conditions of the shed, stranded ducks go unnoticed. Many ducks are trodden underfoot, get hurt by other ducks and die from severe injuries or starvation. At the back of many farms, there are bins full of dead ducklings.

Preening

Preening is an important behavioral pattern in all birds and in ducks involves immersion in water. Feeding is followed by bathing, after which they carry out a variety of shaking movements to remove the water from their bodies. Cleaning movements then remove foreign bodies and an elaborate sequence is carried out to distribute oil on the feathers from the uropygial gland above the tail. This is necessary for waterproofing and heat regulation. Preening is often followed by sleeping for a short period – and the sequence of feeding, preening and sleeping may be repeated a number of times during the day. Important elements of bathing are the immersion of the head and wings in water and shaking water over the body.

From day one, ducks in natural state display an intense interest in water and spend most of their waking hours swimming.
Ducks in the industry never get the chance to splash in water, not even once, even though they need water on a daily basis.

In farms, ducks are denied these natural cleansing activities, some of the breeders even add an enzyme to the feed of the ducks to reduce the amount of water they drink, so they won't splash the water around and over their bodies.
This leads to poor feathers, difficulty in keeping warm, eye problems and even blindness since they are unable to rinse their eyes in water.

The lives of these essentially aquatic birds consist of pushing their way through the mass of other birds to get to food containers and water nipples.

Most floors in the total confinement duck sheds are concrete or wire mesh with or without straw. The wire mesh is usually placed over a concrete pit with a sloping design so that washing down or collecting manure is easier.

Keeping ducks on wire, results in abrasions, bruises and tears in the area of the hock, shank or foot pad.
Painful staphylococcal and streptococcal joint infections are the common result.

The factors that determine the extent of the injury on these surfaces (wire floors or other non-resilient or abrasive surfaces) are the body weight and the time the ducks are kept on them.

The almost constant lighting ensures they have no natural contrast between day and night.
The “best” overall results are obtained with continuous lighting for 23 hours a day. The one hour without lights is solely to accustom them to occasional darkness so they do not panic in the event of a power cut. The near-constant light maximizes the opportunity for the overcrowded birds to feed and put on weight.

They live under huge pressure and because of the stress, they pull and eat feathers from one another, no matter if they are dead or alive. They are doing it even to themselves.
Many females harass and attack males by nipping their penis, sometimes to the point of irreversible mutilation.

Instead of dealing with the real problem – the exploitation of those ducks in the most disgraceful conditions, confining them in overcrowding sheds, depriving them of water and all their natural needs – the farmers debeak the ducks.

Bill trimming (debeaking) is done by cutting at the upper bill with a blade on an electric debeaker or with scissors. Obviously, the ducks' bills, including the very tip, are richly innervated (supplied with nerves) with sensory receptors, so this procedure is an extremely traumatic experience. Even if the wounds are healed, there is no functional substitution for that loss.

In the wild, the female duck lays 8 eggs, two to three times a year. In the egg production farms, the ducks are genetically altered to produce more eggs and meat.
Those birds are regarded as mere machines.
The mothers never get a chance to bond with their babies, and have been bred to produce up to 300 eggs per year, more than 11 times of their ancestors.

This huge amount of eggs female ducks are forced to lay, results in weak fragile bones, which snap easily, since they use their own calcium resources in order to produce the egg shell.

Another torment caused by genetic manipulation is the horrific disease called egg peritonitis, which causes the inflammation of the ovaries and rapture the reproductive tracts, dooms the helpless ducks to a slow agonizing death.
Corpses of the victims are usually left to rot on the floor, causing more disease and spreading horror among the survivors.

The duck egg industry is following the battery egg industry where 90% of the birds have broken bones by the time they are taken to the slaughterhouses.

Breeding stocks in the duck industry endure a cruel manipulation called 'forced moulting'.
Moulting literally refers to a full replacement of old feathers by new ones in a short time. In nature, birds replace all their feathers in the course of a year to maintain good plumage at all times.
A natural molt often happens at the onset of winter. The duck stops laying eggs and concentrates her energies on staying warm and growing new feathers.

The duck industry exploits this natural process by forcing an entire flock to molt simultaneously in a time that fits the industry and not the ducks. All food is removed until they lose third of their bodyweight!
During this time, they moult their feathers and become bald ducks.

Many die, others get sick.
The idea of force moulting is that the survivors are able to endure one more egg laying cycle before they are murdered. This is done to pump a few hundred more eggs out of the ducks.

The goal of the industry, the ducks’ meat industry and any other industry is to eliminate everything that does not contribute to the final product, to turn the animals into machines for the conversion of feed into meat and other commodities.
Death at least releases them from the pain they suffer as a result of being treated as commodities with no feelings.

The ducklings in the meat industry, who manage to endure their dire conditions for 7 weeks, are stuffed into crates and transported to the slaughterhouse. During this rough manhandling and crushing, their legs often break.
At the slaughterhouse, they are grabbed and hung upside down by their legs (broken or not) on a conveyor system. Their heads are supposed to be dipped into an electrical water bath that is supposed to stun them before the slaughter, however the majority of ducks are not stunned at all, and are knifed fully conscious.

Duck meat is a product of animal concentration camps. Every duck wings, legs and breast someone eats is a vote in favor of those camps. As strange as it may sound to you, explanations are also a vote in favor of those camps.

Choosing to explain to humans that it is wrong to exploit animals is accepting their superiority, their tyranny. As long as you choose to explain to someone that it is wrong to exploit, you accept the fact that it is the exploiter’s choice. Humans decide whether or not to change the way they treat nonhuman animals. It is their decision whether or not nonhuman animals are a part of the moral community.
You can give them all the information you have and show them all the photos and videos you can get, use every argument you know and deconstruct every excuse they argue, but it is still their call.
The abusers should not get the chance to decide whether to stop abusing or not.
WHY ARE YOU GIVING THE ABUSERS THE CHOICE?