Today was a nice hot, sunny day here in the mountains of WV. So this mama duck decided today was the big day and it's time to introduce the ducklings to their new outside pen and surroundings. (For now at least) We're using a Dog kennel that used to belong to my sister. She had giant Alaskan malamutes who would constantly break out. It's been doctored up quite a bit from it, but I figured since she finally got it break out proof for them, hopefully it is break in proof for most if not all predators. It's not stopping me from taking extra precautions though... gonna do all I can to make sure our babies stay safe!!
Right now a good part of the bottom of the pen is dirt, but hopefully grass will be growing soon, and I we're adding pea gravel to half of it as we can afford it.
They found a close by mud puddle..... boy they didn't want to get out and they were so messy when they finally did!!! But they had so much fun.
While they were inside the house, someone told me I could use hardware cloth on a large shallow container with their water container sitting on top to catch the water when they played with it. That worked great!!! And for the first time I woke up the next day to them and their bedding actually being dry! I was going to take the same idea on a larger scale and I surrounded a pallet we had out in the yard with the hardware cloth so their feet won't fall between the pallet boards. I figured it would be a nice place to put their food and water and the entrance to their swimming pool so they can be as messy as they want and it will just all fall down in the holes. I would like to get to get some opinions on what to put over top of the hardware cloth (or if they had a better idea all together) to keep it easy on their feet. We used pine shavings before and that seemed to work good....
Right now a good part of the bottom of the pen is dirt, but hopefully grass will be growing soon, and I we're adding pea gravel to half of it as we can afford it.
They found a close by mud puddle..... boy they didn't want to get out and they were so messy when they finally did!!! But they had so much fun.
While they were inside the house, someone told me I could use hardware cloth on a large shallow container with their water container sitting on top to catch the water when they played with it. That worked great!!! And for the first time I woke up the next day to them and their bedding actually being dry! I was going to take the same idea on a larger scale and I surrounded a pallet we had out in the yard with the hardware cloth so their feet won't fall between the pallet boards. I figured it would be a nice place to put their food and water and the entrance to their swimming pool so they can be as messy as they want and it will just all fall down in the holes. I would like to get to get some opinions on what to put over top of the hardware cloth (or if they had a better idea all together) to keep it easy on their feet. We used pine shavings before and that seemed to work good....
