Duck house

Photos

Click any of the photos for a larger version.

	The house, framed but not finished. Having never built something like this before, I copied the framing of my shed.
	Front view of the house and run. In the enlarged photo you can see the door, which latches tight; the run, enclosed with 1/2-inch hardware cloth; and the handles for the lids/roofs to the run that allow for easy access.
	The windows on the side are finished with 1/2-inch hardware cloth, and a beveled 2x4 over the windows keeps the rain out. The hex sign is for luck, abundance...all the good stuff.
	A view of the inside. Interestingly, the ducks don't crap in the house; they use the run. Maybe they're smarter than I thought.
	Side view. The lids are hinged for access. A ramp provides access from the house to the pen. Next to it is another hardware-cloth window, to provide cross-ventilation in warm weather.

Construction notes

Materials

The total cost of lumber, hardware, hardware cloth, roofing, paint, and other materials was between $250 and $300. It wasn't cheap, but it will last a long time, and it is also extremely secure.

• The wood frame is regular untreated lumber, which is half the price of pressure-treated lumber. This is covered with exterior-grade siding plywood designed for sheds; it has indented vertical stripes to help rain run off. The wood frame of the pen is also untreated; with regular repainting it will hold up fine, and was half the cost of pressure-treated lumber.
• The roof is a composite material that seems to hold up fine but was an awful pain to work with. It is corrugated like tin roofing to aid runoff. If I had it to do over, I'd use tin roofing, but since it's done, I don't have any regrets. The roofing is nailed into exterior grade plywood that I nailed to the rafters.
• The run, windows, and vents under the front and back of the roof are secured with 1/2-inch hardware cloth, stapled to the wood frame with 3/8-inch staples. I have heard of racoons reaching through chickenwire, and the narrower gauge also keeps snakes out. It's more expensive than chickenwire, but I think the security is worth it. The run is also floored with chickenwire (also stapled to the frame) to prevent anything digging in.
• The paint is exterior grade oil over an exterior oil primer. I found an oil-based paint designed for barns whose manufacturer alleges it to be non-toxic.

Construction

Building the house and run — framing, roofing, hanging the door, building the run, stapling hardware cloth, building the lids, and painting — took almost four months, but I wasn't in a hurry, stopped a few times to reconsider my plans, had to wait out frequent rain, and had a baby in the middle of the process. If I had to build a second one, I could probably finish it in a week of work.

As with the grazing pen, I went to some extra trouble to make the house and run look good in the backyard. The joints in the wood frame of the run are half-lapped (so that the surface of each side is flat). For portability, the run is joined to the house with screws that can be removed, and the house and run transported separately.

• The house is 48" wide by 50" deep on the outside; 47" high in back, 53" in front. The run is the depth of the house, 8' long, and 30" high.
• The house rests on cinder blocks which are set into the ground to level it. The run was built after the house was leveled, directly on the ground.
• The door to the house is hung like the door of a house and latches tightly. The latch is not difficult to open but it does require a level of manual dexterity beyond that of any nonhuman animal that might try to open it.
• The run is covered with two lids, framed by 2x4s and secured with hardware cloth. The lids are hinged at the back; in the front they latch with barrel bolts. This provides easy access for humans but, again, no predator can get in. There is no ground-level entrance to the run.

If I get really ambitious, I will draw up proper plans and post them here as a PDF file, but my pencil sketches and scrawled notes, most of which I revised in my head as I actually built the thing, would not be of much use here. (I said exactly the same thing last year about my grazing pen, and it hasn't happened yet, so don't hold your breath. Maybe when I write my book.)