No, not a sportsball reference. We’re making another addition to our homestead menagerie: ducks!

We recently ordered four ducks for delivery in late May, the same day we’ll get a few more chickens.

The breeds of ducklings we’ll be getting are the Buff and Cayuga, one male and one female of each. Click those links to learn more about them on the My Pet Chicken website.

Here’s what the Buff ones look like as adults:

And the Cayugas:

The ducks will be free-range on our large pond. Unlike chickens, the ducks shouldn’t destroy our landscaping… hopefully!

I will build a small 4×4 foot duck house for them, similar in construction to the cat house I built last year. That is the ideal size for four ducks. I currently plan to position it on the east side of our pond. In the following picture, looking south, it’ll be positioned in the center of the picture, at the edge of the pond in front of the rock:

I will re-contour the ground to be a little less sloped, just enough for drainage. Here’s a view of the spot looking north:

After doing a bunch of research into duck house designs, I wrote up a bunch of notes, then over the last few days, I sketched my plans. I drew them on my iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil, in the excellent Linea Sketch app.

Here are the external elevations:

It’s basically a 4×4 foot cube, with a gable roof.

The west side faces towards the pond, so can be considered the front, and features a door for the ducks to go in and out, that can be closed at night with a vertically sliding panel, like the chicken coop. It’ll also have a custom sign, and the controller for the door, that will be able to automatically close it at night, and open it in the morning.

The east (back) side will have a couple of large doors, enabling access to a small cupboard that will contain a jug of food, and storage of spare food and supplies. It’ll also enable access of the nesting boxes. Ducks can lay eggs pretty much anywhere, but I’ll provide ground-level nesting alcoves as cozy private places to lay, and hope they use them.

The north side will include another door, that will enable access to the interior for cleaning, and to reach eggs laid outside the boxes.

The south side will have a closable vent, that can be opened in summer to help cool down the interior.

Here’s a top-down plan view:

Here you can see the food cupboard on the left, and the interior on the right. The circle is a plastic jug for food, that leads to a tube with holes for them to eat from, like in the chicken coop.

Finally, here’s a cross-section through the middle:

You can see the food jug and tube, with a nesting box below, plus the ventilation, the duck door, and the ramp into the pond.

As usual, it’s quite likely I’ll refine the design over time, especially as I build it, but it’ll probably end up much like this, unless I have any radically different ideas before I start. If you have any suggestions or questions, let me know!

We’ll get the ducklings at the end of May, so I’ve got a few months to build this. It will take a while, working on it only on weekends (building it in the shop like the cat house), but I think there’s time. Should be fun!

Today I start construction on my latest project, a small house for the ducks we’ll get in May, as mentioned in my first post on the ducks. Refer back to that for info about the ducklings we’ll be getting, and general info about my house design and where it’ll be located.

I thought I’d mark this occasion by doing an update with the latest plans.  Again, these were drawn on my iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil, in the excellent Linea Sketch app.

Here’s the latest drawing of the external elevations. There are only a few minor changes from the first edition in that previous post; mostly that the duck door is a little higher, and the south wall vent door will now slide vertically, instead of hinging down:

Having the vent slide vertically will allow more flexible opening sizes. It’ll be held at various heights by bolts that slot into holes on either side.

The updated top-down view. The main changes here are the aforementioned vent door, a pull-out inner floor, and a small hatch between the food cupboard and main area:

The inner floor will just be another sheet of plywood on top of the base floor, that can be pulled out to aid cleaning, kinda like the poop tray in the chicken coop.

The new hatch could be used to toss in treats from the food cupboard, without having to open the north maintenance/cleanout door.  A little more convenient.

Here’s the side cross-section. The updates include the new hatch and inner floor:

The inner floor will be on thin boards that will act as runners to reduce friction, and to prevent trapping moisture between the two layers.

A new drawing, showing a different cross section. This one shows inside the food cupboard, with the food jug and tube, the treat hatch, and the nesting boxes below:

That is also a screenshot of the Linea app, showing the palettes. Such a great app.

Lastly, one more new drawing, showing 3/4” and 1/4” 8×4’ plywood sheets, and cutting plans for the various components. I may not stick to this, since I can probably cut many of the smaller pieces from leftover scraps from previous projects, but this shows that I can get all the bits I need from the sheets I have on hand:

Let’s get started!

As mentioned in a previous post, I started work on building the duck house on Sunday. So far, I’ve just cut various pieces.

First up, the floor. Here you can see a 4×4’ square of plywood in the background, which will be the floor of the duck house, plus another full sheet of thinner plywood in the foreground, to be cut for a couple of walls:

I want to use 2×2” boards for the corner studs, but don’t have any on hand, so I made some: I “ripped” (cut lengthwise) a couple of 2×4 boards to make 2x2s:

Here I used a chalk string line to mark where to cut the plywood for the roofline:

After cutting; there are actually two identical walls stacked here. These will be the front and back (aka west and east) walls:

The front wall with studs laid in position, and the duck door marked:

Several cut pieces of plywood, including the front wall on top of the floor in the background, and the back wall, shelf, and dividers in the foreground:

Next weekend I’ll start assembling the pieces.

I spent the last five days working on building the duck house, and finished the primary construction on the walls and roof.

You may recall from last time that I cut the floor, walls, and studs.  So I started work by assembling the front (west) wall and its studs onto the floor, laying it on its side to nail through the floor:

When I built the cat house, I built the floor, walls, and roof as separate pieces, screwed together on installation, with the floor attached to the floor joists. This time I’m building the floor and walls as a unit, with the roof and floor joists as separate pieces.  The floor joists will be a little heavy, being made out of treated 2x4s, and the roof will be heavy, with the rafters and shingles, but the walls will be heaviest, which is why I attached the thick floor to the joists last time.  But having the floor attached to the walls makes construction easier, and should make transportation when installing easier too, since the floor can rest on the cart, and hold everything together better. That’s the theory, anyway. We’ll see!

Anyway, I next assembled framing for the back (east) and middle walls:

Then attached the framing to the floor:

I joined the studs with top plates, angled to match the slope of the roof:

Next was the nesting boxes, the top of which also serves as the shelf in the storage area:

There is a hole through the shelf for a feeder tube, which is supplied by a jug that will contain food:

I made a wall to separate the cupboard from the rest of the duck house, with a 1’ square hole for a “treat hatch”; a small door through which I can toss mealworms to the ducks, without having to open the maintenance door. Plus side walls too:

A view from the other side, showing the treat hatch and nesting boxes:

The hole for the jug is closed with a couple of bits of plywood, that will eventually be screwed into place; these also hold the pipe in position:

This is the feeder tube, or will be in due course; I’ll add a cap to the end, and cut large holes on top from which the ducks can eat.  In addition to the above hole closure, the pipe is supported with a brace below:

To finish the back wall, I added boards to act as doorstops, and plywood for the wall:

I also cut cupboard doors from plywood.  The walls and doors will have trim added later:

Here’s me, all bundled up for the cold. The front of the shop isn’t insulated, so it was about freezing temperature in there:

Next up was the south wall, which features a large vent (that will be covered with hardware cloth wire), with a vertically sliding door. Here you can see the vent cover leaning on the wall (which again will have trim later), and a recessed wall below the vent:

The bottom of the recessed wall has a sloped board for drainage:

Here is a view from inside of the vent and wall:

I added some extra framing to the front (west) wall, to aid attaching decorations later (to be determined), plus made a vertically sliding door that the ducks will use to access the pond:

Time for the roof! I placed some thicker plywood on top, and used scraps of wood to help figure out the desired size of the eaves:

Once I determined that, I cut the roof panels, using a jury rigged structure to hold them in place. Here’s one side:

Both sides of roof, held in place with clamps:

To help join the two halves of the roof and provide some rigidity, I added a couple of small rafters out of 2x4s. Here’s one:

A view inside, showing both rafters etc (the plywood in the back is the vent cover):

I realized that my design was missing an important feature: an awning for the duck door. Not sure why I hadn’t included that, having made awnings for both the chicken coop and cat house. Perhaps thinking that the ducks don’t mind the wet, but I still don’t want any more moisture going in the duck house than necessary. So I built a simple awning, much like on the cat house:

Here’s the awning installed above the duck door (again, it’ll have trim and roofing later):

Finally, I added a small vent above the maintenance doorway; ducks need lots of ventilation:

That’s all for now; time to do some paying work. I’ll probably resume working on this next weekend, or thereabouts. Next up is starting on adding the trim. I’m hoping to finish that and get it painted by the end of March, but we’ll see how much time I can spend on it.

Three more days on the duck house project.

Firstly, I bought a much more compact cap for the end of the feeder tube. I want a removable cap, so I can clean out the tube every so often. You can see my original notion on the left, basically the same as I used in the chicken coop, but that clearly would take up too much of the length of the pipe in this situation. So I found a different kind, that adds pretty much no length to the pipe, attaching by expanding a rubber gasket inside the pipe. This will work much better:

Another purchase was an automatic door opener, the same model I use in both chicken coops. It has a light sensor to open the door at dawn, and close it at dusk, so it needs to be outside. I cut a hole through the front (west) wall, and temporarily installed it (I’ll remove it again when painting):

Here’s the inside view of the automatic opener and duck door. The opener is screwed from the back onto a couple of bits of wood, such that the string from it hangs inside; later it will be tied to the door. An unusual installation, but means I don’t need any pulleys like on the old coop:

Next, I made the inner floor, a second floor layer that can be pulled out to aid cleaning out the duck house. It has thin runners on the bottom to reduce friction, and prevent any water from being trapped between the two layers:

Here’s the inner floor in place:

I recently mentioned temporarily using the duck house camera to watch the shop cat Pepper. I retrieved the camera and temporarily clamped it to the house, to determine the best mounting location:

Here’s the camera view from my preferred location, just inside the maintenance door. This gives a view into the nesting boxes and almost all of the floor space, except the corner under the camera, which is where the water dispenser will be located. (Enjoy the recursive photo of me capturing the view on my iPad):

I also tried other camera positions, like the vent side:

And behind the feeder tube:

But I think the originally planned location by the maintenance door gives the best view.

Since there will be the camera, a heated water dispenser, and a light in the duck house, I drilled a hole near the roof into the storage cupboard for their wires:

On to the trim work. I added trim around the internal treat door. You can also see the wire hole in the top-right, and below it a notched bit of plywood to cover the hole:

I added trim to the edge of the roof. It’ll later have metal drip strip and shingles, like the cat house:

Awning trim; the board at the top of the awning isn’t attached yet, as it’ll go on after the shingles, to hide the nails of the top row:

Duck door trim:

Opener trim:

The big vent on the south wall has a cover that slides vertically. It will be held at various heights by a slide bolt on either side that slides into holes drilled in the trim:

I glued bits of plywood to the vent cover, to later mount the bolts onto to get the right depth:

The vent cover installed. The notch out of the trim allows the cover to be slid to the left to be removed entirely (which I probably will never do, other than when painting):

All the roof, corner, and door surround trim are now installed. I still need to do the trim on the doors themselves, and the fake board-and-batten styling.

Let’s take spin around the duck house. Here the east and north sides (cupboard and maintenance doors):

The north and west sides (maintenance and duck doors):

The west and south sides (duck door and vent):

The south and east sides (vent and cupboard):

Finally, I did a bit of caulking of the joins:

Last Saturday I finished off adding the battens for the fake board-and-batten siding.

Here’s the front (west) wall:

A closer view of that wall.  There’s a gap between the bottom of the battens and the loose board above the awning, as it will be attached after the roofing shingles, which will raise it up a bit:

The north wall, with new battens to the left of the maintenance doors:

The east wall, with the cupboard doors, and new battens below the doors:

The south wall, with the sliding vent.  The wall behind the vent cover is recessed enough to allow for the battens (almost like I planned it, eh):

I drilled a hole through the wall from the cupboard for power cords (power to the house, and from the house to the pond pump).  To make them tidier, I added a conduit with a removable cover for the wires to travel down the wall:

Here’s the inside of the power cord hole, and the cover for the inside, with a notch for the wires:

I also added a surround to screw the cover into:

And a similar surround for the power cord hole between the cupboard and main part:

Finally, I added a couple of boards to the back of the cupboard to enable adding screws to mount the power strip and light timer:

That concludes the construction phase, at least until I build the floor joists and ramp. Next up: starting painting!

Over the past few days I started painting the duck house.

But first, I removed the roof, so I could paint to the edges of the walls:

The roof will be screwed to the walls on installation; it is kept separate for now to make moving it easier. Here’s the underside of the roof:

Some more caulking:

Then it was time to start painting. I started with red paint on the walls. This is the same red as on the cat house (leftover paint):

Then blue paint on the doors; again the same as on the cat house:

Then white paint on the trim around the doors:

And the trim and interior of the walls etc; here’s the south and east sides:

East and north sides:

North and west sides:

Inside, looking at the treat door and nesting boxes. I didn’t paint inside the chicken coop or cat house, but ducks are very damp, so I wanted to paint everything here, using outdoor paint, to help protect against moisture. Note that this is only the first coat of white paint, so is still a bit patchy; it’ll get a second coat later:

Inside, looking at the west wall with the duck door:

Next up: the second coat of white paint, which will conclude the painting.  Then I can attach the door hardware, and do the roofing. Once I buy some drip strip and shingles.

More progress on the duck house project.

I painted the underside of the floor. It won’t be seen, but the paint will help protect it from ground moisture:

And painted under the awning:

Righting it again, captured by the duck (aka Pepper) cam:

We bought a custom-painted sign from Etsy, from the same person that did the chicken coop sign. The sign says “The Boonducks, est. 2019”, with yellow duck images. Jenn chose that as the name of the duck house, as a duck pun on “boondocks”, since the duck house will be in the area of the homestead we refer to as “beyond the pond” or “the back 40”. I also installed the duck door opener:

The opener with the door closed:

The opener with the door open:

Pepper strolling past the duck house while I was having lunch:

I then stapled wire hardware cloth over the two vents:

Here’s the hardware cloth on big vent:

And the hardware cloth on the small vent above the maintenance doors:

The view from outside:

The big vent closed:

Partially open:

A closer view of the vent and cover, showing the bolt and holes to enable opening to various levels:

The power cord cover, which is held in place with small tabs:

Next up was attaching hardware to the doors, starting with the small treat door; hinges, handle, and a roller catch to hold it closed:

The same for the two cupboard doors; it has roller catches mounted under the shelf. I’m not going to add a bolt or gate latch on these doors, unless the roller catches prove inadequate (raccoons can be very clever, but I think this should be sufficient):

Attaching the four maintenance doors:

Me attaching the maintenance doors:

The maintenance doors installed and closed:

They are in four parts to allow a variety of access. Here’s one maintenance door open, by undoing one bolt, enabling a quick peek or dropping in treats etc:

The top two maintenance doors open, by undoing two bolts, which will be useful when the ducklings are young, preventing them from escaping:

The left two maintenance doors open as a single unit, by leaving their bolt closed, and just undoing the lower bolt. This will be useful for quickly reaching eggs not in the nesting boxes (ducks tend to lay anywhere… though admittedly so do our chickens):

All four maintenance doors open, enabling full access for cleaning out etc:

I then put the inner floor in place, added the waterer, and installed the camera mount. Here’s the view from the camera:

The camera & waterer, with the doors closed, and wires routed via hooks into the cupboard:

Next up: roofing!