This post has been muscovy approved. No birds were harmed in the making of this post.
For the last couple years, my ducks and geese have been free to range where they will on the property. But with the geese attacking the dogs, and the dogs defending themselves (which has led to bloodshed, but I absolutely refuse to punish a dog for defending himself against such aggressive attacks), AND what with my husband's desire to quit having to power wash the porch all the time, we decided to start fencing in portions of the property.
Here . . .
. . . and here seemed like likely candidates.
I call these areas Gosland, and we have a nice view of them from our deck.
It took ages putting the fence up. We were new to this sort of job, and mistakes are everywhere, but we got it to the point that the waterfowl are able to be contained - and so long as it works, I don't mind a little unsightly evidence of amateurs at work!
I like to leave the gates open for the deer to wander in after everyone's been cooped in the evening.
In the time the fence has been up, I've noticed some problems I never had before, or were never a big deal to me before. They mostly have to do with interactions between the ducks and geese, and some of their differences creating minor issues.
For instance, their water habits. My muscovies are not huge water fans, despite pictures like this suggesting the opposite:
They tend to bathe once or twice a day, and their water tends to stay clear enough that I needn't clean out and refill it more than once a week, or sometimes even longer. But give the geese access to that water? Hoo boy. I'm changing their water daily - which has never quite made sense to me, because they don't really bathe any more than the ducks do. But whatever it is they're doing to the water, they're leaving it filthy. That doesn't seem quite fair to my ducks.
Their feeding routine has been an issue, too. The ducks get access to feed all day, while the geese have a few nibbles in the morning, graze all day, and then come home to a full meal before being cooped. This wasn't a problem before being confined to the pastures, because I'd just toss the ducks' bowl onto the deck where the geese couldn't get to it, but now there's nowhere to put the feed where the geese can't guard it against the ducks. It's just plain jerkiness, too, because the geese don't really eat the feed outside of their mealtimes; they just don't want the ducks to have it.
My last and biggest concern was for the breeding season. My ducks do try to check out the goose nests, but that's not really a problem as the geese are quick to put a stop to that. But reverse those roles, and you have curious geese chasing broody ducks off of nests and rolling eggs all around. I didn't want to have to do what I've done in previous years and close my ducks in with their nests until the eggs hatch. That created a lot of extra work, and you could tell the broodies weren't entirely thrilled with it, either.
My geese aren't mean to the ducks, so I didn't feel the need to separate them entirely the way I would if, for example, there was a habit of geese killing ducks/ducklings, or vice versa. I felt my best bet was to create a little courtyard for my ducks that would be inaccessible to the geese. So I took some spare fencing wire and carabiners, and did exactly that, in the simplest, most effortless way I could think of. Thus, Club Canard was formed.
The hoop coop I house the ducks in is only some feet from the fence itself, so it was nothing finding some scratch fencing pieces around the property to enclose the area between the coop and the fencing. Since I'm only worried about keeping geese out, I don't need anything fortified against predator invasion or stuff like that, so a few caribiners was all I needed. A special bonus with using carabiners instead of something more permanent is that it's a breeze to detach and move the fence pieces if I'm needing to drag something larger than myself into the area, like my dump cart.
I also wanted quick access to the area for myself, like when I'm bringing in feed for the day and don't feel like having to move an entire fence section to do so. I have several spare cheapo dog play pens lying around - I use them for quarantining birds and whatnot - and I attached it, again using carabiners, so I can make use of the little door on the play pen.
And let's not forget the most important part! It's the whole reason for putting up this quick little courtyard, the thing that allows the ducks access to all of Gosland, while also allowing the geese to roam everything except the ducks' private area, where the nests can go unmolested and the water stays cleaner longer. What is this magical little innovation that makes all this possible? It's nothing more than the spectacular, splendiforous, fantastical hole-in-the-fence! Just a few snips with wire cutters, and suddenly a piece of fencing is magically transformed into a duck portal. The geese are helpless against it. It took only one evening of herding the muscovies through for them to master the magic of hole-in-the-fence.
Club Canard comes equipped with a state-of-the-art poolside experience . . .
. . . fabulous communal fine dining . . .
. . . and spacious accommodations for all your brooding needs!
All this and more, in our guaranteed goose-free zone, courtesy of hole-in-the-fence!
A special thanks to Goldie, my lone bantam hen, whose daily treks into Gosland through the fencing to escape the attentions of my larger roosters gave me the idea for hole-in-the-fence.
