duck pen under grape vine?

[kkattt]

Hi! We are in the process of making a permanent habitat for our two ducks. We were thinking of enclosing our 10x10' grape vine trellis. Any thoughts on this? Thanks!

 

[Amiga]

There are always differences in setups, but I can tell you that my grape arbor is in the ducks' garden area and it's working out fine.

That said, here are some details:

The grapes are in a raised bed with several inches of mulch.
The grape arbor is about 5'x12'
It is part of about 500 sf of garden available to the ducks.
It is separate from their lockable day pen, which they are in from 2 to 8 hours a day (10'x16'), so they're not on the garden all the time every day

I let the ducks prune the grapes' lower branches

 

[manybirds]

Great idea! Dave Holdread (poultry historian who's raise top show quality waterfowl for over 40 years) does it. the ducks will eat the fallen fruit. I would keep the vine itself out of the birds reach so they can't demolish the vine or eat the fruit right off the vine. They might choke on pits, i'm not sure so I would recomend checking that first.

 

[Wifezilla]

My pen is covered in grape vines. The plants are on the OUTSIDE of the pen but grow next to it and up and over. The ducks will eat any leaves or grapes that grow through their side. Some of the ducks will eat fruit that grows low enough. A few of my ducks do not like grapes (weirdos). In the summer their pen gets great shade. And in winter the leave fall and let the sun through. I recommend grape vine to everyone. You and the animals both benefit. The other year I harvested over 50lbs of grapes from 1 vine.

As for choking, grape seeds are small and wont bother the ducks. They swallow live fish whole. Grape seeds wont even slow them down.

I have 1 concord vine and 1 red seedless. The red seedless grows much faster and puts out way more fruit, but I use both grapes for different things. Concords are best for cooking (jams, jellies, sauces, etc...) and the red seedless are best fresh or frozen whole for snacking.

 

[kkattt]

Oh they love to prune the branches!

. The grapes have not come out yet... I'll have to see how they are with them!

 

[Wifezilla]

Here are Seymore (concord grape on the left) and Audrey (seedless grape vine on the right) a few years back. The duck run is behind that

 

[featherfinder]

Quote:
Sorry to go off topic but the names? Little shop of horrors? If so better hope they dont turn and start eating the ducks

 

[Wifezilla]

So far Audrey is content with water and not blood....but sometimes a squirrel just disappears...