Duck Pen Build

Our hobby farm is starting to shape up. My current thought is it will be feasible for us to find some market niche and have a viable second income from it over the next few years. What's the niche? I don't really know. So at this point, we're still doing all of these projects as a hobby.

I built a duck pen over the course of a few months. The whole process was pretty interesting. I got an agriculture use zoning variance from my township zoning inspector this spring, then started sinking 4x6 pressure treated posts for the fence.

Since I started this build in early spring (mud season) I couldn't use a skid steer post hole auger, since it's too heavy and would get stuck in the yard, so I used an "Earthquake" 1 or 2 man 2 cycle engine auger to drill the post holes. (22 of them) That portion of the project was hugely labor intensive. Had I used a skid-steer auger it would have taken a couple of hours. Instead, it took multiple days of multi-hour sessions of back straining effort.

Once the posts were in I actually was able to use a rented Kubota tractor to dig out a pond for the ducks and dig trenches for the water and electric lines. The Kubota is all-around useful, but pretty bad for specific tasks. A tracked excavator would have been much, much better for digging the trench. I really probably needed two machines--an excavator and a skid steer with a bucket.

Once the lines were in I fenced in the enclosure. That was a pretty large undertaking as well. I did the fence in segments between the posts rather than running a few stringers all the way around the enclosure and mounting the fence to that. My initial concept was to build them in the shop and transport them outside, but I ended up building all of them in place. That ended up being very labor intensive with many operations per segment, but I think it looks a lot prettier and more interesting than if I had done something simpler. It follows the contour of the landscape while still being like a "building" versus a fence.

Finally, I built a little 5x8' coop for the ducks. When I do a project like this, I like to try out some techniques and materials I might like to use on a larger scale. For example, on the duck house, I did board & batten siding with pine to get a feel for the expense and difficulties associated with that type of siding for the house. I think it ended up looking nice and should be easy to maintain over time. It's probably affordable if I used our own lumber instead of buying it. I also did some stuff like use copper trims and flashing and did some homebuilt windows.

The ducks are our first farm animals. We started off with 4, which ended up being 2 females and 2 males. They seem to be at-ease most of the time, and enjoy their lives. Currently the pond is being used to provide fertilizer water and to run a test aquaponic system. We'll see how everything holds up over the winter and see how our little flock does in their house.

It seems like next spring we should be able to double the size of the flock without causing any major stress to the troupe we've already got.