What does your duck hut look like?

[Jlw0903]

What is the size of your hut for how many ducks? What do you do for ventilation?
Is your hut just on the ground or raised/have a flooring? What is your preferred bedding and do you vary it based on the season?
Im looking to see what others have fond successful for their ducks.

For my six ducks i have a 5x6 (or is it 6x7?) insolated hut with a raised flooring and ventilation windows near the top. We recently took out one of the windows and put in a shop fan to increase ventilation in the summer.
I currently have pine shaving bedding. Thinking about going back to straw?
No food or water in the hut to reduce moisture and molds. And since it is insolated i haven't had concerns about it being too cold in winter yet. (Though i have a contingency plan if it does get too cold).

Anyways id love to hear from you more experienced duck owners on what you have found works best since ive only had ducks for about a year and a half and i still fret over them terribly.

 

[corriemartin]

I'm not an experienced duck owner (first year with ducks), but my ten ducks (2 drakes and 8 hens) spend the night in a converted goat shed. It's about 8 X 8 feet, not insulated, with three walls, and the front is open (chicken wire over cattle panel. There are cinderblocks around the circumference to deter digging predators, and the back wall has a long window (with hardware cloth over it) that I keep open if it's not bitterly cold.

I use a deep litter on the floor (dirt), with partially composted wood chips and additional layers of pine shavings as I need them. It's about a foot deep now. I fluff it up every couple of days since the ducks pack it down. I DO have food and water in there for them at night, but my waterer is in a very big and deep rubber feeding tub, which has eliminated all the splashing.

So far, it's been working....

Here's looking in the door.

 

[Jlw0903]

I'm not an experienced duck owner (first year with ducks), but my ten ducks (2 drakes and 8 hens) spend the night in a converted goat shed. It's about 8 X 8 feet, not insulated, with three walls, and the front is open (chicken wire over cattle panel. There are cinderblocks around the circumference to deter digging predators, and the back wall has a long window (with hardware cloth over it) that I keep open if it's not bitterly cold.

I use a deep litter on the floor (dirt), with partially composted wood chips and additional layers of pine shavings as I need them. It's about a foot deep now. I fluff it up every couple of days since the ducks pack it down. I DO have food and water in there for them at night, but my waterer is in a very big and deep rubber feeding tub, which has eliminated all the splashing.

So far, it's been working....

Here's looking in the door.View attachment 2426788

I like your water idea!!!! that's the perfect tub for it!

 

[RJKnott]

5 ducks. Built a 20X20 foot pen for them.

on the ground with chicken wire fencing buried 1-1.5 feet straight down on all sides and layed flat out from the base 3-4 feet from the pen. Bird netting and chicken fencing all around it and on the top.
Plywood walls on the 2 sides and hardware clothe all around

put a tarp on the exposed side to block the wind at night when it gets cold

The dirt there is pretty soft and the ducks love to splash the water out of their pools and make it all muddy to forage for worms. So 1 corner is just dirt but the rest I use straw. The ducks get around good on it and it’s soft on their feet and not too hard to clean

a couple little kiddie pools with water to splash around in and 3 coops for them to sleep in for extra protection in case something, somehow, gets into the pen at night.
I’m new to ducks too. Just this year really keeping them. But the ducks seem happy with the space and I can’t even get them to leave the pen most days

 

[Abriana]

My two ducks sleep in the chicken coop. I am working on a more permanent solution though (they sleep in a cage in the coop for now to keep them separate but with the chickens, especially the pullets they were raised with, I’m hoping to add a second door that leads to a run outside and to a small enclosure inside). They can get up my ramp just fine, it’s the same one for the chickens. I thought I would need to build a different one (longer and wider) because I’ve heard that ducks have difficulty trying to get up narrow ramps or won’t do it at all, but mine are very inclined to fly and will hop up there easily. I use pine shavings, always have and probably always will. No food or water in the coop unless absolutely necessary, but I have a water-catcher that I built out of a paint pan and hardware cloth (I can show pictures if someone wants) in case water does need to go in there. I’ve only had mine for three months but I’m starting to fall into a pattern as I learn and things are easier now (changing shavings nearly 2 times a day in the beginning—that was not fun).

 

[Maddog_photog]

With the help of my former Marine Science teacher, we built what I refer to as ‘Motel 6 for ducks’. That is, 4 walls and a roof. It’s an overnight structure only. PVC pipe frame, bottom half of the sides are 1/4” hardware cloth, the top half is boring Chicken wire with fiberglass roofing. It’s 8 feet long by 4 feet across and 3 feet tall settled atop a big plywood base so predators can dig and try to get under all they want and all they’ll get is dirty. Frame is held down with a bungee chord at each corner.