Moving house....not for us ;) but why have we had to move our ducks?

You will see on our recent YouTube video that our ducks are now in our paddock area.  They were being bullied over food by the laying hens would you believe?  Now if you watch the video, excuse the accent, I hate how I sound sometimes :)  Also I think I sound a little arrogant in places which is definitely not meant to be the case :) as I hope you guys would know.

Anyway, the ducks and hens.  They all got along famously when food wasn't involved but the poor ducks were too polite for their own good and despite being 3 or 4 times the weight of our brown hens, they didn't get goaded in to fighting over food and we were having to make allowances for how to feed them.

Round here we need things to run smoothly and efficiently, so this wasn't an option.  We can't have the ducks not getting enough food and we don't have spare time to stand round and hand feed them (every day at least ;) )     

 

Naturally, Rodney helped.

 

So Steven set about with his pallets, hammer and nails, found some roofing that you are sometimes lucky enough to have lying around on a smallholding and made them a lovely duck house that will most definitely stand the test of time! 

 

Whilst we worked on this, the ducks were still in the orchard (where they lived with the chickens) but we soon moved them in to the paddock once their house was ready.

In the paddock there is an area which naturally dips and collects water so we have added a pond liner to it and filled it up with rain water.  If you don't know already, ducks make everything filthy in no time!  The pond is no exception.  The good thing with this is (the theory anyway) that we can empty and refill it by tipping the liner out.  It's not very deep at all.  We will let you know!

Rodney and Buster thought it was great fun!

We would like the ducks to stay in the paddock area.  We don't want them getting any ideas about swimming off down the river! They have plenty of space, water and food here but I'm sure we'd still lose them given the chance.  So the next project, before we moved the ducks in actually, was to chicken wire the bottom of the post and rail fence that runs round the paddock.  We worked together and the weather was kind to us; it didn't take too long and another  good job done.

The ducks were soon investigating their new home and seemed to give it the bill of approval (sorry, couldn't resist!!)

Life moves on here, exciting times and a growing flock. I can't wait to see the egg results when these ducks are all laying, imagine all the things I can make with soooo many duck eggs.  They are my complete favourite animal.