Started the Duck house today!

[Chick_a_dee]

We're ordering 3 Buff Ducklings in January with our order of 5 Ameraucanas, and I didn't want to put them in with the chickens as I've heard ducks are very messy, and well my chickens are not lol. So, I started building a duck house today, it'll be about 4 Deep, 5 Wide, 4 High at the front and 3 at the back. I drew up some basic plans, and then went hunting through the Coop archives on BYC for some coops people have made that match my duck house. So far I've got the first stud wall up, the 4 ft one, and have started the back wall which will have a 26.5" wide door in it for cleaning and feeding.

I will have 3 nestboxes should I decide to up the amount of ducks, which will have access from the outside. Since we're enclosing the poultry yard in the spring, I will be building the ducks a small triangle run off the front of the building with a paving stone floor, and lots of extra security so I can leave them with access to outdoors at all times. They will also have a second sub-run in the corner of the poultry-yard (their house will be inside the yard, whereas the chickens will have access to it through their run), which will contain a medium sized in ground pond, this will be seperated from the communal poultry yard by a fence with a gate, which we can open up so the ducks and chickens can have a large area to "free range," in.

Here is what we have so far! I will have more photos hopefully every day until it is finished, and Friday I will be going to the Habitat store to see if I can find some siding, and other pieces to use for the house. We have already got some roofing, as we found a large piece of roofing steel that matches our house in the hackney shed.

Putting the footing blocks in

The first wall goes up, I decided not to have my posts go to the roof of my house, who knows why, I just did.

 

[Omran]

Oh Man, it is very cold and BYC Addicts still doing construction work out there, Good for you and keep usupdated.

Good luck.

Omran

 

[AtRendeAcres]

looks GOOD!

 

[Chick_a_dee]

The weather has been terrible so I haven't been able to work on the duck house much. I started work again yesterday, put up the back wall, and measured for the first truss.

My side walls will come in after the trusses, with their height at the top of the back wall. I will add small studs above that afterwards, I took my ideas from the construction of a horse run-in LOL.

This was the idea that I started out with, this is the ducks entry / popdoor and their front window. This faces west.

I decided having outside access to nestboxes was a good idea. The boxes are at floor level, and can be used for chickens if we should decide ducks are not for us.

This is the space I had to work with, this is the "poultry yard," which will be a large fenced in area for the chickens and ducks to 'free range' in during the day. The ducks will have their own closed run for the night, with a cement paver floor covered in mulch or something similar, it will be triangular in shape with the peak probably at 4 or 5 feet and a door at the end.

And this is the duck house from the side so far, trusses are 2x6, framing is 2x3, floor joists were 2x4. The floor will be covered in vinyl flooring that we found in the garage when we moved in. It looks like barnboard print vinyl LOL.