Adventures with Ducks: In the Beginning

I think we may have gotten a little carried away with the ducklings but they were so cute and straight run so the whole egg laying thing was iffy, of course I just had to keep buying!  12 ducklings later, brooding IN THE HOUSE at two weeks of age became a little terrifying.  Ducklings are basically little pigs with feathers. Cute little pigs with feathers

First batch of ducklings
I had to go back for more...

Shockingly they play in their water which is to be expected but even the tiniest amount of water will be "dabbled" in.  Ducklings love to chow down on their dry crumble feed and then run over to the water and start nibbling around in it.  Basically they swallow some, they slobber some out, they cycle some through their nostrils, slobber some more, we call that "dabbling".  All this slobbering creates a small puddle around the water dish which then becomes a fantastic place to stomp around and play in.  The dry home you are to provide for your little delicate ducklings is now splattered with water, poo, some sand and wet feed.  The books all warn against this and so it was clear I was probably going to kill my ducklings if I didn't do something about it.

The water saver!!!  A very simple DIY item I found while googling how to set up my brooder so I wasn't having to clean it twice a day. I have two little girls, I do not have time to clean the brooder of 12 ducklings TWICE a day.  So I found this lovely item, basically just a tupperware storage drawer big enough to hold the waterer and the ducklings.  You cut out the top or maybe put the drawer in upside down.  Then staple hardware cloth to the top.  Place the waterer on it and voila!  All that water the ducklings were playing in and spreading all over the place is now contained inside the drawer.  I also created a much larger brooder and threw out the idea of keeping a heat lamp higher and higher every day to cool it off a degree at a time.  I mean seriously, how did ducks survive without us?

Larger brooder

Water saver photo (not mine)

Two week old ducklings not at all bothered by
my negligent heat lamp placement

It became very clear at this point that the ducks needed a duck house as soon as possible so plans began to be formed.  We had to wait for the later than usual snow fall to stop before we could get started and then we had to halt construction periodically for the higher than normal rainfall we got through early summer.  We did get the duck house built!

Duck house 

In the meantime the ducks were moved out of doors as soon as they started feathering out.  They lived in an old two horse trailer for a few months while we waited out the weather and got the duck house built.

TONS of rain and late snowfalls created quite an exciting yard area for the ducks.  Not so great for our building plans though.

FIRST I thought perhaps I'd convert that old two horse trailer into a duck house but I decided we would likely need a heat lamp in there from time to time through the winter and the trailer itself just isn't very "cozy", much of the heat off of a lamp (and the ducks) would be lost in all the empty space etc...  I also had an old camp trailer that is way beyond using for actual camping that I thought I might convert into a duck house.  Again we ran into the same problems, so far off the ground it would create so much space to keep warm with the ducks on the coldest days and nights we'd need a heat lamp and again, much of that energy would be lost.  Maybe with a really big flock of chickens either one of those options would be great. Since chickens use vertical space and ducks don't because they don't generally roost.

Cayuga starting to look pretty awaiting a new duck house.

We had a pile of old tires that had been sitting in our pasture for a few years waiting for a landscaping idea that never came to pass.  Since we didn't really want to spend a ton of money on this duck house as the ducks were basically an experiment anyway we decided on an earth ship construction and using reclaimed wood for the rest of the build.

The back wall of the duck house

We cut the tops off the tires and filled them with dirt row by row and stacked them that way.  It's helpful that we have tons of dirt and a small tractor.  The cutting the tops off of the tires was labor intensive for sure.  Some people use a reciprocating saw but I'm no good with power tools (drills are mostly safe it seems) so I was charged with cutting the tires with a utility knife.  Once you get the idea it's actually pretty quick and easy.

Landscaping timbers were also laying about in the yard waiting for that landscaping project I mentioned so we stacked a few on top of the tires to create the base for a roof.  Those were secured by BIG landscaping nails that were placed in concrete poured into a hole dug through the dirt of the tires.

We created a berm with dirt behind the tire wall and covered that with sod we took off of the top of the prairie to help keep erosion to a minimum.




Using more landscaping timbers we put four posts on the front side of the duck house and framed out the roof.

Using pallets and a pair of windows we had saved for just this sort of thing we added the front of the house.  The door is still needing to be installed as well as the "duck door" which will likely stay open through the year during the day.

We did purchase ply wood, tar paper and a few shingles for the roof, we did have some shingles and tar paper leftover from our barn build last summer.

The ducks were very happy to get into their more spacious house and out of the horse trailer. We were super happy we didn't have to shell out hardly any cash for this build.