Vacation: Do you lets your ducks stay in their run or hire someone to coop them?

[Duck_Duck_Dog]

Hi,

We have 2 welsh harlequin pet drakes that were born in April. They are full size now and are handsomely sporting their big boy feathers. We have an 8x16 foot fully enclosed run - 1/2 wire cloth sides and top with buried or aproned cloth surrounding the run. The run includes a pond (with an attached aquaponics system for cleaning/filtering the water) and of course separate water and feeder. We coop them up in a smaller coop each night and let them out early the next morning.
We are going to be away for 3 nights for the first time since owning them.

My question is: should we hire someone to come and coop them up each night and let them out each morning knowing that they will need to wait a bit longer since we usually have them out around 5am and don't expect someone else to be here that early or should we just let them stay out all night if they so choose still protected by their run?

Either way we will have someone checking on them daily to make sure their water and food supplies are good but I'm just wondering if it's worth the extra trouble of cooping them up for these days when we've taken all precautions to predator proof the run to the full extent this site has educated us on?

Thanks for your time!

 

[NoahSully]

Welcome to BYC!
Wow that's a secure looking run!
If it were me, I wouldn't see the need to put them in the smaller coop ever..
You'll definitely be fine for 3 nights

Handsome looking ducks!

 

[Jpat]

i put plastic down in the garage and turn the exhaust fan on. Make a ring out of little wire fence and put lots of water and food out. I only leave for 3 days at a time

 

[DrHawkeye07]

My dog sitter gladly agreed to coop up my ducks and let them out each morning. Your run looks solid, so I would consider leaving them out if that were mine. I use a chain link dog kennel as my run, but only have hardware cloth on the bottom 3 ft and field fencing over the top. It's not impervious to weasels, hence why I want to coop the ducks even when I'm gone.

 

[Miss Lydia]

What a nice set up. Looks like it will be safe to let them remain out while you are away since there will be someone coming to check on them. Beautiful boys.

 

[Cayuga momma]

I would let them out. Your run looks safe. I actually took my ducks on vacation with me to my dad's house. Lol, they enjoyed the ride, until we passed tractor trailers. They quack-b*tched at those tractor trailers evertime we passed one.

 

[chickens really]

I never Coop mine at night. They have a secure run. Yours should be fine.