Our Great Pyreness LGD is eating our duck eggs and I need to be hatching them to pay our feed bill, not feeding them to the dog! I picked up some black plastic buckets with black lids for free on Craigslist so my husband cut a hole in the lids and layed the buckets on their sides with fresh shavings. It does not appear the ducks are showing any interest in using them.
We have a cedar cat house they use with a round hole for access but the house is square with an A-frame roof. We don't have the materials to make these so I had hoped the buckets would work the same way.
We have bantam ducks so the holes in the bucket lids are not very large. We could try making them bigger or cut a hole into the side of the bucket instead of in the lid. We only did two so far to see how they work but they don't seem to be attracting the ducks.
We caught the LGD eating two duck eggs today alone and those are just the ones we saw her eat. I need the ducks to lay in some sort of safe nest instead of just dropping them on the ground. I am tempted to grab some hens and put them inside the buckets so they at least know they are there for their use but I don't want to give them any reason to fear going in them.
I wonder if they would prefer a hole in the bottom of the bucket too so it is more like a tunnel with two exits so they don't feel trapped. They have used an empty feed bin before but it is too open so the dog can get the eggs. We need a hole too small for the dog to get her head into.
I am going to keep toying with ideas until I figure out something but I thought some of you might have some good ideas to share.
We have a cedar cat house they use with a round hole for access but the house is square with an A-frame roof. We don't have the materials to make these so I had hoped the buckets would work the same way.
We have bantam ducks so the holes in the bucket lids are not very large. We could try making them bigger or cut a hole into the side of the bucket instead of in the lid. We only did two so far to see how they work but they don't seem to be attracting the ducks.
We caught the LGD eating two duck eggs today alone and those are just the ones we saw her eat. I need the ducks to lay in some sort of safe nest instead of just dropping them on the ground. I am tempted to grab some hens and put them inside the buckets so they at least know they are there for their use but I don't want to give them any reason to fear going in them.
I wonder if they would prefer a hole in the bottom of the bucket too so it is more like a tunnel with two exits so they don't feel trapped. They have used an empty feed bin before but it is too open so the dog can get the eggs. We need a hole too small for the dog to get her head into.
I am going to keep toying with ideas until I figure out something but I thought some of you might have some good ideas to share.