Duck houses

[SkyeT]

I've seen threads about insulating houses, or house upkeep, but I haven't seen anything on what kind of house to have.

Our ducks are happy little guys and gals. They have full run of our backyard, which they rule. The pen we put up for them isn't necessary anymore and they rarely visit it. But, it is August, and even though I may have a three week winter in January here in San Antonio, I do want to make sure that my sweet littles have a place to snuggle when it does get cold.

What kind of houses/coops/etc do you recommend? We will have 8 ducks, 5 of which will enjoy a perch (the muscovy). It doesn't need to be too fancy, and something we can do ourselves.

 

[happy duck]

Ducks are very cold hardy, but when it comes to keeping warm....a solid stable dog house, chicken coop, and the like with a thick layer of straw will do just fine in the cold winter. Making sure that there is good ventilation is great too! Just make sure that the coop is out of the wind and there are no big opening in the coop that will let cold wind in where the ducks will be laying down.

 

[TSOWOATNKC]

I personally have three sided shelters for our waterfowl. The shelters are behind double layered wire 8 ft fences, so not much can get in, over, or thru. The 8 ft fence started out as being deer prevention around the garden, but it worked pretty well for keeping various critters out too. I see raccoon, fox, coyote, bear, (or signs of)and opossum on a pretty regular basis on trail cam and around the property. We've seen rats get in, but nothing else. That changed after all our birds went after the ones that dared to go in and I made sure the kids weren't overfilling the feeder.

The most important thing is good ventilation in my opinion, second would be floors and walls that can be throughly mucked out. No thresholds at the doors to keep stuff in; you need to be able to just push/rake everything out. I have a paver floor on our shelter, and I put straw/grass on top. I scrape and hose it down every so often. I did stick on tiles on a previous duck house iteration but they pulled up TWO and tried to eat them.

 

[llombardo]

Mine was a pretty simple design

 

[happy duck]

Mine was a pretty simple design

View attachment 1513166

Did you cover up the opening at the top with some kind of welded wire. Looks so cute too!

 

[happy duck]

Did you cover up the opening at the top with some kind of welded wire. Looks so cute too!

Forgot to add a question mark......(*?)

 

[llombardo]

Yes hardware cloth and I added vents too

 

[SkyeT]

How many fit in there? I want to have house for 8.

 

[llombardo]

It's 4x4 and 3 ducks. I could fit one more by the allowed standards, but when they are in there, I would think 6 would fit.

You could build it any size you like. For 8 I would think a 6x6 would work.

 

[SkyeT]

Thanks. I am always looking out for ideas. I like simple. Your's is pretty cool.

Do you have nesting areas in it? Or do you just throw bedding in there and let them do what they want?