duck housing--questions and plastic dog house??

[Sparow]

We just finished building a chicken coop and, truth be told, kinda wanted a break from building things for a while. Problem is, there are 4 adolescent ducks living in a fenced-in baby pool in our garage

I've read that ducks need about 3 square feet of house per duck--is that correct in people's experiences? These guys would have pretty free reign during the day, as with our chickens. The house is just for night time or inclement weather. (their food and water would have to be in an exterior shelter)

(We live in VA, so it's not too cold..but last winter we did get some 0-degree nights....)

So we were considering maybe an at least temporary solution of a dog barn or dogloo for these guys--of course, since we don't have a fenced-in area we will need to figure out how to get a hard door on it (that might limit the option to dog barn rather than dogloo given the doorway shape), but the only ones that I can find are at largest about 38" x 29" x 30"tall. These are mallards--maybe mallard-runner crosses.

Would that be enough space? Has anyone done this?

And if we do go the building-oursleves route (which is--ahem--possible..esp. since we do have some leftover lumber from teh chicken coop--we just wanted something for thems ooner rather than later to get them used to it) how tall does the door and the building itself need to be?


Thanks!!!!

 

[Cetawin]

3 sq ft per duck is the minimum recommended for times of bad weather and lock down. Many people use dog houses and igloos...just make sure it is all predator proof and you should be fine.

 

[Sparow]

Thank you!
I 'spose that means I'll have to see if I can find a larger one than that...

 

[kawonu]

Some of our geese tend to take over the dogloo when the dogs aren't in them. I've seen 3 in there at a time. I don't see why ducks would be any different. Our calls have several houses to choose from. Most of the time they choose one or two of the houses and cram all in. One of the houses is a dogloo imitation and they just use it to jump up onto the tops of the other houses. I do have a runner that lays in that house.

 

[jsvand5]

Maybe try one of the 10' x 10' dog pens. I think lowes sells them for $199. Might still be a little small, but its better than a kiddie pool.

 

[Sparow]

Thanks for the lowes idea--I'll have to look into that.

They do range with the chickens during the day--we just put them in the pool in the garage for now (there's too much junk for them to not get hurt if they had the run of the garage) when the sun gets low....

 

[Wifezilla]

Here is the set up I have for my ducks. They free range during the day so this is just a night pen...

I got the dog igloo at a garage sale for $25!!!

 

[Sparow]

Thanks everyone--this is really helpful. I think we'll probably have to build a run anyway eventually (for when it starts getting dark before we get home to close up the chicken coop), but for now we have no run--so I'll have to see if we can find a way to get a solid, lockable door on one of those plastic things.

That's exactly part of the reason that was such an appealing solution Wifezilla! Price--we figure if we can't get something workable for under about $60 we might as well build it, since we already have some scraps that we could use for part of it.

But my main concern (now that it seems obvious that plenty of ducks are happy with such a situation) is predator safety. We haven't had any problems yet--but we have tons of raccoons and some hawks. Also I'm sure, foxes.

Although as long as we can mount hinges and a latch to it, we could probably get a plywood door on one of the "pet barns". Perhaps we'll do that. Has anyone ever tried that?

 

[xfilesnumber1fan]

Here is mine is a 10x10x6 welded wire top with tarp over it their pool, 2 XL petbarns..To nest and sleep in..I have 2x2 wire wrapped 24 inches around the bottom of cage and I let them out durning the day...

 

[AlineD]

This is a nice run-- do you do anything extra during the winter to help them stay warm?

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