Moveable duck house for paddock shifting

I have read through a bunch of other posts but I don't think I see exactly what I'm after here.

About 16 ducks (some of the ducks are actually geese).  Layers.  Also, 4 of them are unsexed Muscovy.

This is a three-season moveable (wheelbarrow-ish) duck house, for the winter there's already a dug shelter in a barn for them and they can have thick bedding and all that.  Let's ignore winter for now.  Or maybe just always ignore winter, hm...

I like the Suscovich tractor idea ("stress-free" sounds great) but I want it to have wheels.   And be moveable by two people.  And still have the bottom rest on the ground.

I'll draw an ascii scketch here of what I envision:



                        |\------------------------------|
                        |. \           ......................  |
________________|xxx-0---xxxxxxxxxxxxx|--------___________


The -0- part is a wheel (two wheels on axles that can move independently).  They rest on the ground, and the hardware cloth bottom also rests on the ground.

\ is metal roofing.  It covers only a part of the enclosure (half) and is at human height so you can go inside and have a look around.
----- on top is harware cloth, hard ware cloth on all six sides of the box.  Again, human head height.  

("But how does the dog get in and out?"  "Well he just--d'oh!")

Yes, a door that is also mostly hardware cloth and lightweight.

Obviously this needs cross braces, needs to be fairly lightweight (is 1x strong enough? is 2x too heavy?), but can take two people to move it to the new location.

I imagine moving it about once a week, and not with the ducks inside.

They hopefully will have a pond but will only get to visit it some of the time, and otherwise I may dig them little 2' pond-lets a la the "seal a small pond" badge bit.  I imagine they will gley them up a bit more.  (I can read/start separate thread for this part of things--the point is that I want the ducks to be able to be moved from one area to another and have their house be nearby to herd them into and spread their mess around (via the floor hardware cloth holes) fairly evenly, rather than having one central spot that gets really degraded.  

(On pond weeks they will be invading the pond as a whole, but afterward the pond gets time to recover like the other paddocks.  Their fence will go around the pond as a whole plus duck house for that week.)

Will the "duckbarrow" idea work? are there weak points in the design that will cause this to fall part the first time a coyote winks at it? is it going to be much more of a pain in the butt to move than I imagine?

A wheelbarrow load is supposedly up to about 1200 lbs, I think two people could lift that much.  If the ducks aren't inside on moving day.

I get about 230lbs for materials including 2x8 steel roofing (Salatin recommends aluminum but I can't find it for sale, I forget if he said there was some special aluminum roof fairy you can get it from).   It's 1.5 lbs per square foot.

I'm not moving it every day, it's not a tractor, so I think this is workable.  

All sorts of various growies in their paddocks over time, alfalfa was sown by the previous farmer.  

Struts--I think I can use clothesline for a lot of these.  They are tensional supports, they don't need to be compressive to give strength to the triangles.


|\|        where "\" = a string sort of thing but it hasn't worked yet

If I'm dead wrong about that, then add another 90 lbs.  310 lbs.

Still under 400 lbs, for two people.  

OK, nesting boxes, I'm thinking I'll use plastic bins here since they're out of the sun mostly and not in contact with soil or water.  So add another 20lbs to be on the safe side.

354 lbs I think.

Oh, I want the door to be on the side rather the front, so when you shift from one alley paddock to the next you don't have to rotate it into place, or parallel park or anything, just slide right in and then come around and hop the fence and open their door and they're all set.

OK, thanks for any feedback.

Last point, this is basically a replica of the duck house I saw a neighbor had for about 8 fowl (3 ducks 5 chickens) but they lived in there pretty much fulltime and ate feed, and got one hour a day to visit the lawn.  He said it was coyote- fox- hawk- racoon- and weasel-proof.  Mine would be the same but with wheels and it makes coffee.

Hi Joshua,
I have no experience with ducks, but a decent amount of experience with moveable chicken coops, and I watch a lot of youtube :)

I think a moveable duck house is great. The kind of fencing surrounding this duck house will be a huge piece of the puzzle. If you have a good fence (particularly electric) surrounding it, then that is your first line of defense, and the house will not need to withstand as much direct attack from predators... presumably the fence will keep most out.

To my knowledge, ducks prefer the ground rather than perching, and are much less likely to use nesting boxes than chickens, preferring to lay their eggs all over.

In my limited experience, I think if you built an A frame style duck "tractor" that sits on the ground and has two removable wheels on one end, you would probably be in pretty good shape. With the A frame, you have one less side on top, and if you leave the bottom open, one less side there as well. Take out the nesting boxes, and I think the weight and cost should come down considerably. I have seen some people use plywood and metal roofing, but some just use chicken wire and tarp. Not as pretty, but works fairly well. It wouldn't hold off a bear, but you could probably build this style strong enough to withstand a coyote... with the hope and assumption that they won't get in because of your great electric fencing of course. The removable wheels give you the option for multiple duck "tractors" and only have to buy one pair of wheels.

I have seen this setup for geese on the GoldShaw Farm youtube channel. Just some things to think about. Good luck, and when you build something, come back and share some pics :)

Thanks Matt.  

I'll look up that model.  Having to put the wheels on and off sounds arduous, but it's only once a week so I can just have a little patience.

Is the A-frame a problem for getting inside it to futz around?  I have in my mind the picture in the Sepp Holzer book that looks more like a people-house than a tractor.  

Matt McSpadden wrote:Hi Joshua,
I have no experience with ducks, but a decent amount of experience with moveable chicken coops, and I watch a lot of youtube :)

I think a moveable duck house is great. The kind of fencing surrounding this duck house will be a huge piece of the puzzle. If you have a good fence (particularly electric) surrounding it, then that is your first line of defense, and the house will not need to withstand as much direct attack from predators... presumably the fence will keep most out.

To my knowledge, ducks prefer the ground rather than perching, and are much less likely to use nesting boxes than chickens, preferring to lay their eggs all over.

In my limited experience, I think if you built an A frame style duck "tractor" that sits on the ground and has two removable wheels on one end, you would probably be in pretty good shape. With the A frame, you have one less side on top, and if you leave the bottom open, one less side there as well. Take out the nesting boxes, and I think the weight and cost should come down considerably. I have seen some people use plywood and metal roofing, but some just use chicken wire and tarp. Not as pretty, but works fairly well. It wouldn't hold off a bear, but you could probably build this style strong enough to withstand a coyote... with the hope and assumption that they won't get in because of your great electric fencing of course. The removable wheels give you the option for multiple duck "tractors" and only have to buy one pair of wheels.

I have seen this setup for geese on the GoldShaw Farm youtube channel. Just some things to think about. Good luck, and when you build something, come back and share some pics :)

Hi Joshua,
A lot of the A-frames that I have seen, have been pretty tall, somewhere between 5-6ft high. So I don't think it would be bad to get in and deal with stuff. As for the wheels, that just to save a little money if you have multiple. You could always get more wheels :)