Hey all you duck lovers! I have some ideas I want to throw out there for suggestions/comments.
First of all a little back story. I had not planned on raising ducks, but I ended up with 3 ducks that were given to me and 3 we purchased. We had 3 mallards (2 males ,1 female) and 3 runners (I believe 2 females, 1 male). Two weeks ago the female mallard went missing and I hope and tend of believe she flew off since we have had some wild ducks flying overhead lately and she has been flying more than the others. We didn't see any signs of predation and I keep telling myself she is happy somewhere else. So that leaves me with 5 ducks. They are currently in our rather large dog lot (dog has been temporarily moved to grandparents) and living the high life. Well, we have to find a way to get the dog back out here so I have to build something for the ducks.
I have a chicken coop and run and a shed we built that I think will be the best place to add on for the ducks. Eventually I will build a "chicken lot" that the chickens and ducks can use when someone is home, otherwise they will be in the run. Temporarily we plan to build an enclosure (25ft x 25ft) for the ducks using welded wire fence and hardware cloth. I believe I have the plans for this figured out, but I'm not sure what to do for the housing. The current plan is to build 2 miniature lean-to's on the existing chicken shed, one for housing/shade and one for feed. The chicken shed is 12ft wide with a 4ft opening in the middle. This means I have two 4ft sections to work with. I plan on making the two lean-to's 4ft x 4ft and 3ft or 4ft tall and boxing in 2 of the sides leaving the front open (the back side will be the chicken shed). The front of one of the structures will probably be boxed in somehow for the winter.
I hope I haven't over complicated this explanation. Here are two photos, one of the end of the chicken shed and one of the ducks.
What do you guys think?
Josh
First of all a little back story. I had not planned on raising ducks, but I ended up with 3 ducks that were given to me and 3 we purchased. We had 3 mallards (2 males ,1 female) and 3 runners (I believe 2 females, 1 male). Two weeks ago the female mallard went missing and I hope and tend of believe she flew off since we have had some wild ducks flying overhead lately and she has been flying more than the others. We didn't see any signs of predation and I keep telling myself she is happy somewhere else. So that leaves me with 5 ducks. They are currently in our rather large dog lot (dog has been temporarily moved to grandparents) and living the high life. Well, we have to find a way to get the dog back out here so I have to build something for the ducks.
I have a chicken coop and run and a shed we built that I think will be the best place to add on for the ducks. Eventually I will build a "chicken lot" that the chickens and ducks can use when someone is home, otherwise they will be in the run. Temporarily we plan to build an enclosure (25ft x 25ft) for the ducks using welded wire fence and hardware cloth. I believe I have the plans for this figured out, but I'm not sure what to do for the housing. The current plan is to build 2 miniature lean-to's on the existing chicken shed, one for housing/shade and one for feed. The chicken shed is 12ft wide with a 4ft opening in the middle. This means I have two 4ft sections to work with. I plan on making the two lean-to's 4ft x 4ft and 3ft or 4ft tall and boxing in 2 of the sides leaving the front open (the back side will be the chicken shed). The front of one of the structures will probably be boxed in somehow for the winter.
I hope I haven't over complicated this explanation. Here are two photos, one of the end of the chicken shed and one of the ducks.
What do you guys think?
Josh
