Duck house and run progress

[bigtrout]

Well, the duckhouse is finished and setup with a temporary small run.

I am making a pvc run 10' x 15' for daytime. It will be hardware cloth for three feet up and plastic hardware cloth for the rest. It is light enough to drag around the yard. I will add wheels to the duckhouse which will be inside the day pen. At night they will be secured in the house. If I start to get a predator problem during the day I will electrify the run.

The four week old pekins has been in their house a week and so far they seem to like it.

 

[BirdBrain]

Your PVC hoop house looks great. Can you do a bit of a tutorial on how it went together? What are the base dimensions and how tall is it? Are the hoops the standard 10 foot length? What size pipe did you use? How are the joins made? Can you post some detailed pictures?

 

[The Duck ABC's]

I did PVC hoops in my garden. The problem we have is the high UV levels at 4000 feet plus over 300 days of sunshine. The tubes got brittle and broke in the second season. Not going that route again. I now go for metal. www.lostcreek.net

 

[bigtrout]

I will make a good tutorial when finished...

I will say the pvc I am using( except the fittings which I will paint) is ten foot lengths of electrical pvc conduit. Electrical pvc is rated as sunlight resistant. The base dimensions are 10' x15' and made from 3" pvc. The hoops and the rest are 3/4 pvc. I made my hoops approximately 18 feet long and it gives me about six foot tall dimension.

The bottom three feet( up to the horizontal supports) will be half inch hardware cloth. I was installing that today. The rest will be plastic hardware cloth or plastic fence( I live near the Allegheny River...plenty of eagles). Keep in kind this is a day pen for when I can not be immediately outside....im planning on secure enough to keep out daytime dogs etc. The coyotes and racoons do not venture into the yard during the day for fear of meeting my two Weimeraners and my German shorthair mix or my .17 HMR rifle.

If I do have a problem I will put a small solar fencer on it with one wire low around the base on long standoff insulators for the diggers and one at the top of the hardware cloth for the climbers. My plan is to park it near my garage for winter for access to power for heat/light/water. The rest of the year I will move it every few days to give my ducks fresh forage. Their house will be inside( on wheels). If I am home I have been letting my ducks free range and they stay close to home. I fear they would see the river and try to cross the highway if they were not supervised so the pen is for the containment as much predator protection.

 

[Amiga]

Great work, bigtrout. I must say I decided to go ahead and put hot wires around my duck shelter before their first night outside. Our list of predators is long and I don't have dogs.

My feeling is that the way I would find out if predators could get past what I had and I could have done more, that the ducks would be dead and I'd be heartbroken.