Here's our coop on the coast of Maine. We built it last summer, and we're pretty pleased with it overall! It houses seven silver Appleyard sucks (5 ducks and 2 drakes). The plastic is on two sides of the run for the winter months and gives the run protection from the prevailing weather. The straw bales are winter-only as well.
Here is the other side. We sited it next to the compost bins and the vegetable garden for obvious reasons.
Downhill we planted comfrey, which is a wonder plant when incorporated into a coop design in our opinion.
This is an interior screengrab of the run from one of the duckcams. There is a pretty long ramp and a large area underneath the duckhouse that is incredibly cozy! Their heated water bucket is at the bottom of the ramp. They have no problem doing the single file thing on the ramp and ducking to go through the door.
The run is covered in hardware cloth with a predator apron installed around the entire coop. There is a people door for easy access to the run.
We built a three-door door on the back for access to the duckhouse. When we are collecting eggs, spot cleaning or adding new bedding (or feeding mealworms!), we just open the top two doors. When we are doing the bi-annual clean-out of the deep litter bed, we drop the "tailgate" and drive the FEL right up to the opening. Easy!
We usually leave the door from the run to the duckhouse open at night, and they decide where they want to be, but when it's super cold (like -10 F and colder), we lock them in. We do not provide any supplemental heat in the duckhouse, and they do great. This video was taken before we installed the plastic on two sides of the run. Also, sorry for the "Beyond Chickens" reference. I meant Backyard Chickens, but my podcast, which I'd been working on all day, is called Beyond Data...and I'm getting old! ;-)
Quack!
question is your run covered in netting of some kind.. If not that would be a good idea to cover and secure down so you don't have to worry about flying preds.
