gonna sound dumb but need info on some duck nest boxes

[maransfan16]

for starters let me explain my problem i raise ducks and have for a while now. but i have to free range them and the reason i say have to is because i have the wonderful luck of having a lovley neighbhor who wants to sell MY animals and has for years. no i am not going to report him and i don't worry about him selling any of them because he is older and they would have to be cooped up for him to catch them hince the reason i free range all my birds. but now for the reason of this thread i have just been raiding nests from under bushes and out of piles of hay thrown down by horses for all these years so this year i made the mistake of listening to someone telling me that guineas love nesting in barrels and will lay in a barrel before under a pile of brush

. so i left the barrels out and of course the guineas refused to even go near them but my mallard hen made a nest in one so i got to thinking about moving the barrels over next to the pond in different spots under some bushes do you think they will lay in them?

 

[Amiga]

It's up to them. My ducks are in a fairly secure setup - they have a night pen and a day pen, and we go on walks together in the little bit of woods on our property. It's not a bad life, as far as I can tell. They are healthy and seem content.

But they lay where they want to. Often, it is in a little corner nest they share and build. But sometimes it's just in the middle of the pen. So I try to keep the bedding in good shape.

You have good reasons for the way you keep your ducks, I just always worry about predators. But you have a human "predator" of sorts who would nab your birds, so I see that the risk may actually be less the way you have things, especially if you have guard animals.

I put keyed locks on the pen doors, by the way.

 

[maransfan16]

haha yes my only predetor problem here is humans!

thankfully my two dogs keeps the racoons and possums and such away. my biggest problem is when a hen hatches off without my knowing and she makes it to the pond and the turtles get them before i do. thankfully the ducks and geese sleep right on the bank of the pond so if they see something or hear something they just slip right into the pond so land predetors aren't a big nighttime problem