Training ducks to get out of the pond and pen up at night

[Clueless]

Hello all. I have been reading the forum for a while now but have never posted. I am new to ducks, but in short, I have five ducks. Two pekins and three rouens. One drake in each. They are now about 9 months old and live in a hardware cloth pen, which is 8' by 10' and 6' tall, and it gets moves around every few weeks. They have a baby pool and a dog house inside the pen.

I have plenty of land, and there is a one-acre pond down the hill, and I would like to free range them during the day. However, it would take all of about a day for the local vermin to figure out they were around if I leave them out over night. As a result, they need to be penned up at night. They are totally skittish, save one of my rouen girls, who is just a sweetie. We have been feeding them at the same time each day and ringing a bell. We plan to ring the bell to alert them that it is feeding time in the pen, but any other suggestions for getting them to pen up at night?

 

[katharinad]

You need a permanent pen and house, so they learn to walk back to the same location each night. Moving it around will confuse them and as a result they may not go home because they are confused. Ducks just don't look around trying to figure out where there home is, they simply walk the same route they are used to. My ducks cover about 2 acres each day and they have the same routine each day, and that is what they expect. In the morning I open the duck house's human door, they walk out, cross the large parking lot, go into the daytime pen (1 acre) where their pool is and food as well. They have a fit, if not at least one pool is filled with fresh water. I the evening they sit next to the gate waiting to be let out so they can cross the parking lot and walk into our back yard where they hang around for 2 hours until dark. From there they walk around the small pen to the back entrance of the small pen, into the small pen and through their dog door into the duck house (different from the morning) and all we have to do is close the door. They are quite religious about their routine and any change just makes them mad. We had a different routine this morning due to putting on leg bands. Well, they were less then pleased.