Baby ducks on the way!!! Question about duck habitats and access to backdoor ponds.

[Scatterknit]

This is my first time with baby ducks and they'll be here in a couple of weeks!! Indian runners. So excited!!!

Once my baby ducks make it past the brooder stage and they are big enough to hang out with my chickens, I would like to figure out a way to provide them with a little swimming hole inside our day-time chain link run. (I let the birds out in a large run during the day and put them up at night to protect from predators.)

I have a large pond - about 8 acres - behind my house. I do not want the ducks to be able to freely swim on the lake - they'd last about one day with the snapping turtles and other predators on the lake banks. I had the idea to run the chicken/duck run down into the lake and enclose a 5x5 section of the lake with coated chain link. My fence guy says he can do it. It would give them a section of lake to swim around in, but I don't know if it would stop a snapping turtle from getting at them - they could chomp through chain link I expect.

The benefit would be that the lake water would flow through the chain link and keep it relatively clean. They'd have a place to splash and play but would not be able to get out of that one area. But if a snapping turtle is going to make a hole in it, I need to come up with something else.

Maybe rolled up barbed wire around the outside of the enclosed area to keep the snapping turtles away?

Any thoughts appreciated even if they are "OK that is completely not going to work because of _______" Thank you!!

 

[Dr. Todd]

Snapping turtles don't have the strength to cut metal nor would they - they bite prey and potential predators, not inanimate objects.

 

[Scatterknit]

This is. What I'm dealing with.

He's not even one of the biggest out there. They've torn through turtle trap cages.

 

[Dr. Todd]

Yep, that's a snapping turtle. It still can't get through chain link.

 

[Scatterknit]

OK good!!! Thanks Dr. Todd! One less predator to worry about - rural Georgia is sometimes like an episode of Wild Kingdom.

So anyone have any ideas on how to get chickens to live in peaceful and loving harmony together during the day?

They'll have separate housing at night.

 

[SpiderSilk]

That's an alligator snapper. He would find a way to get to the ducks I would.not risk it. No way to know there is not one in the chain link for the ducks until its to late.

 

[jtn42248]

The ducks and chickens should do pretty well together so long as they have enough room. I have 24 chickens and 24 ducks that share the same range of about an acre with no problem. The chickens will even stand in the ducks pool while the ducks are in it at the same time with no bickering.

As for the turtle problem. I would not risk it without feeling absolutely certain that a turtle could never get into the ducks area. That would involve making certain there were no turtles in the area to begin with and then burying the fence down to a level that the turtles would not be able to get under it as well. I personally would not attempt what you are doing but that is me. Nothing will make you wish you had not taken the chance like the site of a duck dragging itself across the yard with only one leg because a turtle snapped of the other one or the site of a duck gutted by a turtle floating dead in the middle of the lake.

Try to figure out how to give them a water source isolated from the lake as long as there are turtles there. They only need enough water to bath and mate in. It does not have to be deep and it does not have to be large and you will have the peace of mind that they are safe.