Duck, Duck, Goose

This year will be our third year raising ducks. Last year when we put them to pasture, we had guard geese to scare off any visitors. Our geese last year were already adults but this year we're raising their guard geese with them!

Every year Devon rebuilds the brooder. To be honest, I think it would be nice to have it up all the time. I want to help design that one though. I think I could think of a few improvements. For example, not having the plug ins for the heat lamps directly behind the brooder wall. Also a wall with a hinge so you can clean it out easier. It would be convenient too because we eventually want to do more batches of ducks each year.

This is 2024's version:

Devon here, big thanks to Rose for typing the above and keeping the farm going for all of us!

It's true. I tear down and rebuild the brooder every year! The thing is, we only have so much shop space that is needed for other activities in other times of the year, and due to past experience, I am gun-shy about putting brooders outside or in less controllable environments. That being said, I do hope to someday have the brooder either on a trailer, or in a hoophouse, so I can have shop space available year-round.

Rose wanted me to publish a bit on explanation of the brooder design for this year.

Last year, I used mostly the same materials and had the same footprint in the shop. But between ducks being inherently messy creatures, and a leaky waterer, there was a LOT of effluent that leaked through the bedding and sat on my shop floor, attracting flies and overall making a mess and a stink of things. I had wanted to design the brooder to capture this effluent last year but was so behind it didn't happen. So, it is a little overcomplicated, but my hope is that my complications will pay off by capturing what was wasteful effluent and utilizing it as a high value liquid fertilizer. this simply involves a gutter and "roof" system under the brooder. Of course, in typical brooder fashion, the idea is not to overbuild, but to just put it together.

Here it is before it was put all together!

As you can see it takes up half the shop!

And that's how you get the finished product. We got the water and food ready for them before they came home but of course missed other things. We decided we should probably have a checklist.

Next step is getting the ducklings!

They come in these nice little packages and yes that is 150 ducklings!

Here they are getting used to their new home!

Thanks for reading, stay tuned for further duck adventures!