Just thought I'd share our duck pen (and its residents). We live in rural West Virginia, so predators are a very real threat. Our pen has a poured concrete foundation to frustrate diggers, and the entire floor is now covered with nylon lath panels like the one in the interior photo. Walls are made up of 2 prefab dog kennels--very heavy wire mesh to keep out coyotes and bobcats. To prevent raccoons from reaching through, or weasels and the like from climbing through, the walls have a covering of metal hardware cloth wire-tied in place. We figure it's proof against almost all predators except bears. There is now an interior pool made from a mortar tub (about 30 gallons) with its own drain which runs through the foundation wall with a drain outside the pen. Our original flock was 7 Swedish Blacks given to us a year ago. Since this consisted of 3 drakes and 4 hens (and the optimum ratio is around 7 hens for every drake) we have just added 16 more hens--2 Cayugas and 14 Khaki Campbells, as seen in this video (www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=760315293990820&set=vb.100000370684406&type=3)





. As soon as they're grown we'll move them from their temporary quarters in our greenhouse, into the pen with the adult ducks. We free-range all of them during the day.

They are beautiful!

Wow!! I am loving your setup Jake:) Did you build it? Welcome to the website by the way!

My wife and I designed it, but a local handyman (haven't yet found anything he CAN'T do!) who does a lot of work for us built it. Incidentally, during last winter's dire cold snaps, we covered the outside of the walls in translucent tarps to ward off wind chill. They're still in place now.

If you don't mind me asking how much did that cost you? I really like to try and get an idea of how much something that large would cost so that I can build it to house all my animals:)

It would be really cool if you can build some sort of pull the drains out of the enclosure once the ducks are done playing!

By the way Jake, I have laid out instructions on how to update your profile. Maybe a photo of you and your sweetheart as your profile picture? I'm super glad you're with this man!

If you need help updating your profile further I'm totally here to assist you!

Update Profile Here:)

We used two "Doc Bob" kennels from Tractor Supply (www.tractorsupply.com/en/store/doc-bobreg%3B-professional-kennel-10-ft-l-x-5-ft-w-x-6-ft-h) at $300 each, opening them out and joining them to form the walls. Beyond that, I can't give you an exact cost. We ordered the concrete delivered by transit mixer and poured it by wheelbarrow. You could probably save by mixing on-site. The hareware cloth we used to cover the outside was $50 per 25-foot roll, and I think we probably used 3 rolls. Steel roofing (we get quite a lot of snow here and I wanted something that would shed it easily) was about $32/panel, and required about 12 panels. Add to that the cost of the treated 4x4 posts supporting the roof, and the lumber for the roof framing, and the labor (not an issue of you're doing it yourself), and the lattice panels covering the floor. It wasn't cheap, but it's well-built and will last for as long as we're here, so it will amortize over time. And as I mentioned, short of bear predation, our critters are as safe as we can make them. Incidentally, we've now subdivided off a 5 x 10 foot end section with its own door for chickens, and just finished an enclosed chicken run about 10 x 60 feet. No next boxes (yet) as we're raising these for meat.

It's looking really good and I'm sure it will keep out everything! Hopefully no bears come around that are so hungry they have to eat through metal to get in there:)

Have You thought about a rain water catching system for them and or a garden ?

Here in So Calif. We have only gotten 6.5" all last year july 1 till june 30 however we got a inch in a hour last sunday

Actually, it's not much of an issue here in West Virginia. We get about 48 inches a year, and this is a wet summer to boot. Our roof runoff is piped to our 1-acre pond.

Ok carrying water in 1 gal jugs would be a pain