Welcome to my BYC page.
My name is Mike and I'm currently living in the hills of east Tennessee with my loving, patient, caring, understanding, darling wife
and my two sons, Iain and Jack.
Around 2005 my wife persuaded me to plant some tomatoes in a "garden", well they grew about as well as could be expected and the harvest was horrible.
Ever since then I have been bitten by the garden bug and have been working to improve my understanding of gardening and home raised food in general.
Around 2010 I started looking in to raising poultry. I did a lot of research on the web and eventually came across this site. Did a WHOLE lot more reading and started thinking of a coop.
I was reading a book called "The 4 Season Harvest" by Eliot Coleman and he mentioned ducks as the real life garden schmoo. Intrigued, I looked more into the viability of raising ducks.
After even more reading on the qualities of ducks I was sold, and in June of 2011 I took the plunge and got my first order of ducks.
I had read you could house ducks in old dog houses, but that did not fly with these birds. So I decided I better make them one.
Eliot's book had simple plans for a duck house dubbed "Duckingham Palace" and I liked the overall appearance so I roughly doubled the size and got to work...
Hmm Guess I should finish up the pictures...
Just a basic 4' x 6' platform made with treated 2x4s. Added some extra support for hardware cloth
I made the walls from 2x4s ripped in half, so basically 2x2s. The idea behind this was to make the overall house weigh less. I still was thinking fairly mobile.
Part of my though process behind the 4' x 6' footprint was efficient use of a single sheet of plywood for the siding. Cut the plywood down to 6' long and then ripped the 6' board down the middle. This leaves me with 2' of siding on 3 sides and 1' of hardware cloth for ventilation.
The material I had in mind for the roofing was 6' dog eared fence planks. I knew I would cut them down to 3' so I figured my roof at a 8-12 pitch to give the roof enough overhang.
Another shot different angle. Shows the framing for front ramp/entrance and rear access/cleaning doors.
I overlaped the cedar roof planks and also built the front door/ramp from cedar. You can see the finished rear access door leaning on the side.
I haven't taken a completely finished photo of the house yet. I now have 7 ducks in it every night and they seem happy enough about it.
My name is Mike and I'm currently living in the hills of east Tennessee with my loving, patient, caring, understanding, darling wife
and my two sons, Iain and Jack.Around 2005 my wife persuaded me to plant some tomatoes in a "garden", well they grew about as well as could be expected and the harvest was horrible.
Ever since then I have been bitten by the garden bug and have been working to improve my understanding of gardening and home raised food in general.
Around 2010 I started looking in to raising poultry. I did a lot of research on the web and eventually came across this site. Did a WHOLE lot more reading and started thinking of a coop.
I was reading a book called "The 4 Season Harvest" by Eliot Coleman and he mentioned ducks as the real life garden schmoo. Intrigued, I looked more into the viability of raising ducks.
After even more reading on the qualities of ducks I was sold, and in June of 2011 I took the plunge and got my first order of ducks.
I had read you could house ducks in old dog houses, but that did not fly with these birds. So I decided I better make them one.
Eliot's book had simple plans for a duck house dubbed "Duckingham Palace" and I liked the overall appearance so I roughly doubled the size and got to work...
Hmm Guess I should finish up the pictures...
Just a basic 4' x 6' platform made with treated 2x4s. Added some extra support for hardware cloth
I made the walls from 2x4s ripped in half, so basically 2x2s. The idea behind this was to make the overall house weigh less. I still was thinking fairly mobile.
Part of my though process behind the 4' x 6' footprint was efficient use of a single sheet of plywood for the siding. Cut the plywood down to 6' long and then ripped the 6' board down the middle. This leaves me with 2' of siding on 3 sides and 1' of hardware cloth for ventilation.
The material I had in mind for the roofing was 6' dog eared fence planks. I knew I would cut them down to 3' so I figured my roof at a 8-12 pitch to give the roof enough overhang.
Another shot different angle. Shows the framing for front ramp/entrance and rear access/cleaning doors.
I overlaped the cedar roof planks and also built the front door/ramp from cedar. You can see the finished rear access door leaning on the side.
I haven't taken a completely finished photo of the house yet. I now have 7 ducks in it every night and they seem happy enough about it.
