Welcome to season three of the Yellow Cottage Homestead Ducklings show!

We begin this season, like the previous one back in May, by cleaning out the duck house in preparation for the new ducklings, due around Thursday. [Update: probably Wednesday.]

Here’s a cam shot of the duck house before cleaning it out:

I started by raking out the straw and spilt food (ducks are very messy eaters):

I then hosed it out; I designed the duck house to be fairly waterproof with this in mind:

Wet duck house:

More hosing out:

I left the duck house empty for now, so it can dry out:

I left the food in the tube, since that is still duckling food from the earlier batch (they get starter feed until 18 weeks old). The new ducklings won’t be able to reach it for a couple of weeks, but can eat from the tube when they can.

In a couple of days time I will finish setting it up for the new ducklings, with shelf liner on the floor, the duckling feeder and waterer, EcoGlow, and heat lamp. I’ll probably do a separate post about that, but it’ll be similar to last time. [Update: nah, not much point posting about it; you’ll see the setup when you see me add the new ducklings.]

Next, I installed a proper gate pole. The duckling run is temporary, but since I’ll want it again for the second set of ducklings, I’ll be keeping it around for probably at least another ten or so weeks, so I figured I might as well install a proper pole to hinge the gate:

The pole is set in concrete, from when it was elsewhere in the garden, so I just dug a hole and poked it in. It’s pretty sturdy.

It’ll be easier to open the gate now. It has hinges on the left and a latch on the right, just like a real one:

The rest of the run fencing is still acting as a shade for the older ducks; I’ll restore the enclosure once the new ducklings are old enough to use it in about three or four weeks time:

The ducks were supervising my work: