Show Me Your Pallet Projects!

[gtaus]

anyone made duck shelter from pallets? or any idea? when I move to my new place (hope soon) I have both plenty of room and pallets.

I have raised ducks and geese a few times. They are a lot of fun. How many ducks do you plan on raising? How big do you want to make the duck house?

From my experience, you want to make a duck house that is easy to clean out. Ducks are messy. Much more messy than chickens. I had to clean out my duck house a lot to keep it clean. So whatever design you build, make sure you can clean out the duck house without much problem.

Back in the day, I did not know about using deep bedding for chickens, but that is what I use now in my coop. I only have to clean out my chicken coop twice a year, but could easily go a full year without cleaning the coop. With ducks, I think I was cleaning out the duck house every week. They are just different birds. I hope someone currently raising ducks will see this post and maybe give you a few ideas.

There are a number of YouTube videos on pallet duck houses. I did a quick search and found ideas on 4X4 and 8X8 pallet duck houses.

Here's an idea on a small duck house...

And here is a video on an 8X8 duck house shed build....

If you are new to raising ducks, you will find out that they can be very messy. Here is a longer video on how to keep ducks cleaner with some modifications to your feeder setup and a DIY waterer...

I complain about how messy the duck house got and that I had to clean it out every week, but it was totally worth it for all the enjoyment you get out of raising ducks. I am fortunate that I live on a lake and just let my ducks free range/swim in my creek when they were small babies and then on the lake when they got older.

There are many other YouTube videos on building duck houses and raising ducks. I suggest making time to look around at the videos to see what catches your eye. Don't be afraid to fast forward through the videos to see if it is what you have in mind. If not, then go on to the next selection.

When you get to the point where you start your pallet duck house build, please share your pics and progress with us on this thread. Best wishes.

 

[MACCanadianCoop]

My son came up with an ingenious use for those cut off pallet ends. Pre-made chicken ladder!

 

[gtaus]

My son came up with an ingenious use for those cut off pallet ends. Pre-made chicken ladder!

View attachment 3241827

That only encourages more not to throw anything away! Never know when a cut off piece of wood will come in handy.

 

[MACCanadianCoop]

That only encourages more not to throw anything away! Never know when a cut off piece of wood will come in handy.

Precisely!

 

[chickengr]

I have raised ducks and geese a few times. They are a lot of fun. How many ducks do you plan on raising? How big do you want to make the duck house?

From my experience, you want to make a duck house that is easy to clean out. Ducks are messy. Much more messy than chickens. I had to clean out my duck house a lot to keep it clean. So whatever design you build, make sure you can clean out the duck house without much problem.

Back in the day, I did not know about using deep bedding for chickens, but that is what I use now in my coop. I only have to clean out my chicken coop twice a year, but could easily go a full year without cleaning the coop. With ducks, I think I was cleaning out the duck house every week. They are just different birds. I hope someone currently raising ducks will see this post and maybe give you a few ideas.

There are a number of YouTube videos on pallet duck houses. I did a quick search and found ideas on 4X4 and 8X8 pallet duck houses.

Here's an idea on a small duck house...

And here is a video on an 8X8 duck house shed build....

If you are new to raising ducks, you will find out that they can be very messy. Here is a longer video on how to keep ducks cleaner with some modifications to your feeder setup and a DIY waterer...

I complain about how messy the duck house got and that I had to clean it out every week, but it was totally worth it for all the enjoyment you get out of raising ducks. I am fortunate that I live on a lake and just let my ducks free range/swim in my creek when they were small babies and then on the lake when they got older.

There are many other YouTube videos on building duck houses and raising ducks. I suggest making time to look around at the videos to see what catches your eye. Don't be afraid to fast forward through the videos to see if it is what you have in mind. If not, then go on to the next selection.

When you get to the point where you start your pallet duck house build, please share your pics and progress with us on this thread. Best wishes.

I am not totally new to raising ducks and geese. I have 4 pekin ducks and 6 toulouse mix geese. I plan to get a few indian runner and cayuga ducks as well as a pair of sebastopol geese. I had muscovy ducks in the past. considering to get a few again.

I know they are messy so floor is always dirt. at the moment I have 2 pallets on each side and 3 pallets front and back with a door in the middle of the front side. white tin for roofing. the only problem is it is too low so I cannot get in.

I plan to fence their runs and make them predator proof. in that case I can make their coop 1 pallet wide only and it can be much longer (rectangular). the pallets are 80 cm x 120 cm. their coop is now 80 cm (2 ft?) high. I will make the new coops 120 cm high (I am 160 so it will be easier for me to get in).

sorry I cannot connect my camera to my laptop so no pics.

 

[gtaus]

I know they are messy so floor is always dirt.

When I had my ducks and geese, I had a wood floor in their duck house. Even with cleaning out the duck house about once a week, by the end of the summer it smelled so bad that I tore apart the duck house and burned the wood floor. If I ever have ducks and geese again, it will be a wood floor for me, too.

the only problem is it is too low so I cannot get in. ... I will make the new coops 120 cm high (I am 160 so it will be easier for me to get in).

Understand. When I built my chicken coop, I made it a walk in because at my age, I'm not so fond of bending over if there is another option. Access is the key. My duck house was only maybe 3 feet tall, but the back wall had hinges on the bottom, and I could let the whole back wall down to clean the duck house. So, although it was not a walk in, I had easy access to everything by opening up that back wall. I just used a short rake to clean out the old straw without any problem.

Have you thought of using one pallet on top of the other to make your duck house 240 cm high? I know the ducks don't care if they have tall walls, but, still, I think I would like to be able to walk into any duck house if it was big enough. But, again, I'm at an age where I just don't want to bend over in my buildings.

Also, after having built a chicken coop that is really only useful as a chicken coop and nothing more, I am now leaning towards building shed conversions for the animals next time. That way, if I ever stop having chickens (or ducks/geese), I could use the building as a storage shed.

sorry I cannot connect my camera to my laptop so no pics.

No worries. Pics are great, but not required.

 

[chickengr]

When I had my ducks and geese, I had a wood floor in their duck house. Even with cleaning out the duck house about once a week, by the end of the summer it smelled so bad that I tore apart the duck house and burned the wood floor. If I ever have ducks and geese again, it will be a wood floor for me, too.





Have you thought of using one pallet on top of the other to make your duck house 240 cm high? I know the ducks don't care if they have tall walls, but, still, I think I would like to be able to walk into any duck house if it was big enough. But, again, I'm at an age where I just don't want to bend over in my buildings.

I have to check how many pallets I have. in case I have enough pallets I would make it 160 cm high (80x2). anything over 2 m high would require a building permit.

 

[chickengr]

my first chicken coops were made of pallets. I put 2 pallets as "legs" then built floor on them. they looked like boxes standing in the air. that was easy to clean and chickens had shade under the coop.

 

[gtaus]

my first chicken coops were made of pallets. I put 2 pallets as "legs" then built floor on them. they looked like boxes standing in the air. that was easy to clean and chickens had shade under the coop.

I think that type of design is especially good for people with limited space for a coop and run. You can have the coop inside the run and not lose ground space if the coop is on legs. I bet your pallet coop was better built than the prefab chicken coops sold at our local Fleet store for over $800.

 

[Hedgeland Farms]

T

I love pallets, and I love this thread! A winery right down the road from us has tons of free pallets which we've been collecting for a while, with the intent of building a shed for hay and other storage. In keeping with the free theme I wanted to find one of those metal sheds people are always giving away and repurpose the metal into roofing. Out of the blue, our neighbor lets us know he has a shed we can have, so we finally started on our pallet shed!

To make our lives a little easier we decided to use the metal roof in one complete piece and just walked it down the road to our place. This decreased my original plan of a 12x12 shed to an 8x8, but it'll still work well and just needs to last us a few years. We got the three walls up on Saturday then put the roof on top just to see how it would look (pretty darn awesome!). Sunday we got the front up and I spent a lot of time getting a nicely leveled door frame in with scrap 2x4s we had from other projects.

The next steps are taking apart tons of pallets to place slats over the gaps of the walls and making custom double doors out of, you guessed it, pallet slats. Then we'll sure up and caulk the roof before placing it back up and securing it. It's turning out to be a great solid structure and I'm so excited to gain this storage and clean up the mess of pallets we were collecting!

This is looking AWESOME!!! and gives me hope bc a shed, and turkey housing are both on my list of stuff to make out of pallets. On both I want to double up the pallets like you did!!