Do I have to use a wood floor for my duck house?

[austroberta]

Thanks Duckworth! I didn't see any rules regarding flooring in the Oakland ordinances, but it's good to know.

 

[Duckworth]

Thanks Duckworth! I didn't see any rules regarding flooring in the Oakland ordinances, but it's good to know.

I think they worry about stuff getting into the ground water and runoff. We have a lot of rain here at times. Sometimes nine inches in a few hours. We are on high ground, so water doesn't pool up here, but not all parts of town are like that. The ordinance about flooring and location of pens was in a different section than the ones about how many birds we could have and permit requirements.

 

[CarleeAnn]

Thanks CarleeAnn, your ducks are heart-meltingly adorable! I think I'm tying myself in knots trying to protect my 3 little gals from the nasty critters. We have lots of raccoons, skunks and possums that pass through our yard and I know they would love a few duck heads. With your set up have you ever had problems with predators trying to dig their way in?

We live in South Louisiana in a neighborhood, our only concerns are opossum and and cats which haven’t bothered them (yet ). The three cinder blocks are fairly heavy for even me to move, and the pond is on one side, the fence on the back has cement that goes down almost a foot. The front and right side would be where a predator would dig but no attempts so far, cats aren’t big diggers and I don’t believe possum are either.

 

[austroberta]

CarleeAnn, you're lucky if the cats and opossums are your only concerns. We get big, and I mean big, raccoons. There's a family of them that lives in a house which has been inhabited for years. We get skunks, possums and marauding pitbulls too. Funny, we have 3 cats, but from what I can tell so far, the cats are scared of the ducks!

 

[austroberta]

Duckworth, I can understand the concern about the nasties from duck poop, but we're all on EBMUD water and there's not a well to be found in my neighborhood. Would things like Salmonella still be a concern if no one's well water might be infected?

 

[Duckworth]

We live in South Louisiana in a neighborhood, our only concerns are opossum and and cats which haven’t bothered them (yet ). The three cinder blocks are fairly heavy for even me to move, and the pond is on one side, the fence on the back has cement that goes down almost a foot. The front and right side would be where a predator would dig but no attempts so far, cats aren’t big diggers and I don’t believe possum are either.

We have a couple of opossums living in our yard. I keep hoping our dogs will encourage them to relocate. The people across the street used to have raccoons, but I haven't seen any recently. Our next door neighbor has seven cats. At least half of them live in our yard. I saw a fox about half a mile from our house a few months ago. We also have owls and hawks. So this is pretty much predator central. My duckhouse has insulated walls, roof, and floor, with glass and hardware cloth windows. My pen has 1/4 hardware cloth at least 36" up from the bottom, and 1/2" from there, and the bottom edge is covered by 1x4s to keep anything from trying to pry up the wire. Diggers are unlikely to chew through the pressure treated lumber to get into the pen through a hole in the floor.

 

[CarleeAnn]

Our duck yard is about 12x6 and surrounded with a 6ft+ privacy fence, I forget about the hawks but they can’t swoop in. We also have two dogs, a Great Pyrenees and a Pit Mix- mostly indoor but occasionally spend some time in the backyard and I think their presence also discourages predators. My dogs are also afraid of the ducks! But they are curious still. We really only have one cat to worry about that makes his rounds, it’s his territory and he seems pretty stuck in his ways- only uses the neighbors fence to walk around.

 

[Duckworth]

Duckworth, I can understand the concern about the nasties from duck poop, but we're all on EBMUD water and there's not a well to be found in my neighborhood. Would things like Salmonella still be a concern if no one's well water might be infected?

We are all on city water here. I think they worry about runoff onto neighboring properties, uncomposted manure washing into someone else's yard or into the storm sewers or local creeks and rivers and, depending on how shallow the water table is, soaking through into the ground water, which is a source of city water. As with many city ordinances, the purported purpose of the ordinance may be addressing a perceived risk rather than a scientifically likely one. But rules are rules.

 

[austroberta]

Duckworth, uncomposted manure is definitely something to be concerned about, but is it really possible for a backyard fowl keeper to endanger water supplies? It always seems that very large farming operations, which produce a lot more waste, don't seem to have the same restrictions/concerns. I would think the deep litter method, where the large amount of carbon, represented by the wood shavings, will compost the nitrogen in the poop relatively efficiently, and will kill some of the pathogens in the process, but I'm new to this. I've been throwing the brooder shavings/poop in the compost bin and it seems as if, the more I throw in there, the hotter it gets. Which leads me to another question, is it possible for the duck house to get too hot with all that composting?

 

[austroberta]

CarleeAnn, it cracks me up that your dogs are scared of the ducks too! Especially since your ducks look so sweet. My cats are curious, but when the ducks come charging through, the pooties hightail out of the way fast.