Redoing duck run! I need tips, and coop ideas!

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Weeg

Weeg

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Jul 1, 2020
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Small town in Western Washington
My Coop
My Coop
We have 8 ducks right now. We have chickens as well, but they are separated so they don't bother each other. Both of the runs are horribly muddy. So bad! I feel so bad for them. But in the summer, I plan to take down all the fences, redo the coop, and the run. I am planning on thinning out all my older 5-8 year old birds, which is most of my flock. I am sad about that, but to get more ducks and fewer chickens it has to be done. I need tips. My run is horrible, I want to get more ducks, so I know that that isn't going to help. I have free aged wood chips available for the the taking in the spring. I will have access to though's, but I need all the ideas I can get, for keeping mud at bay. Any coop suggestions as well? We are rebuilding there coop, with walls this time rather then just a chainlink dog kennel. So any tips on setup ideas, are much appreciated! Thanks, Avery
 
Are you planning to roof over your run? That's what I'd recommend from my experience.

Initially, I just had a welded wire top over the run. A few years of dealing with snow and mud necessitated the addition of a roof. It has helped immensely with reducing slop from rains and snow melt.
 
DrHawkeye07 said:
Are you planning to roof over your run? That's what I'd recommend from my experience.

Initially, I just had a welded wire top over the run. A few years of dealing with snow and mud necessitated the addition of a roof. It has helped immensely with reducing slop from rains and snow melt.
Click to expand...
I would LOVE to do a covered run! I would have to get the okay from the builder in the family thought first! If I can do that, it would solve all of my problems!
 
We have six large breed (SAs) with a covered run attached to our elevated duckhouse. The run is ~8'x12' with an additional ~4'x8' area under the house (we can separate that area off if we need to). The far end of the run where the water is has cobbles, and the rest is bare dirt covered with pine shavings and straw. It doesn't get too messy.

duckhouse comfrey.jpg
 
I think if I had to do it over, I would build a very solid tractor for my girls and move it onto clean grass every day. There are two challenges I worry about with a tractor-only set up. First, preventing predators from digging under at night (so it might require an area with a floor and locking the ducks into that at night, or else relying on an apron of wire around the perimeter at the base at a right angle to the sides of the tractor and only moving the tractor to level parts of the yard). Second, a way to keep their water thawed on cold winter nights/days without an electrical outlet to plug heated buckets/bowls into. As it is, on days when the temperatures are above freezing, I carry them to a tractor for the daylight hours and back to their large Fort Knox of a run/pen for the night. That, new turf annually and a light topping of wood shavings in the areas where it doesn't hold up, and a relatively low density of ducks is keeping things from getting muddy like they did last year.
 

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