We only used what we had laying around the stables, we never throw bits of wood etc away as you never know when it may come in handy lol.
To begin with, i got a guy to carry a pallet across the horses field and throw it into the pond... this was the test... would it float... yes it did, we then looked at how i could attach it to the side...
I started off with a pallet, and 4 pieces of wood nailed onto it
i called in help a few days later as i was struggling with time to do it... [ie. hubby got sick of me moaning about it!] we attached on 4 sides... we actually had pretty much the right sized pieces amongst our stack of wood!
this is the most important part .... get the twins in to screw it all together... you cant beat twin power!
The wood we used is pretty thin, but we didnt want to add too much weight, we then put a few wooden 'beams' in as a top frame to help support the walls. we then put a roof on that is just some other ply we had.
It was then put in the stable for the night with the ducks so they could get used to it, i put their feed in it and also manually placed each duck in it so i knew that every single one had been in it at least once.
We then threw it on the trailer to take it to the pond, and had a few rather hair raising moments taking it down the banks of the pond on the tiny ledges.
We attached some plaited baling twine that the hay all comes in around the base of the pallet, and i used the stake part of a broken electric fence post to anchor it to the side of the ponds bank.
here we hit a problem - trying to push it across the pond weeds to get it more in the centre without us falling in!
As you can see, the ducks still like to go onto the ‘floating pallet’ thats still in the pond!
The view from the other side of the pond
I apologies for lack of photos of the roof going on etc but they are on my camera memory card – which i can view them on the camera but apparently the card is corrupt when i try to download to my laptop – so sad as it has the ducks 1st time on the pond on it!
It has 1 open doors – mainly as we are in a rather windy exposed area so i would rather it spin due to the wind rather than be push right to the edge if there was just the 1 doorway (hope that makes sense?)
We were very lucky that the wood we dug out for it – was already painted so we didn’t have to redo it although if i had more time, i would have redone it.
It didn’t cost us a penny to make which is fantastic!
Fine job !!!!!!!!!!!
