Spring Is Near

With spring fast approaching, breeding season is beginning here on the farm. This is an exciting time for us here. The animals are anxious as are we. With the start of breeding season upon us, we begin to prepare breeding pens, sanitize coops, brooders, feeders, and waterers. Everything must be sanitized and prepared for the upcoming exciting new arrivals....chicks, ducklings, goslings, and more!!!

With the topic of breeding pens, I have had lots of interest in how I built and why I use raised call duck breeding pens. Lets start off with discussing what exaclty a breeding pen is. Breeding pens are used to separate birds into specific groups used for breeding those birds. Call ducks come in a variety of colors, and with all of these beautiful colors, they needed to be separated each spring in order to keep the colors "pure". My breeding pens are used to keep my birds separated into specific groups, so that I can personally keep track of lineage and who is producing the best offspring possible.

With that in mind, some individuals like to use breeding pens that are on the ground, personally for call ducks, I like my breeding pens to be raised up onto legs. This keeps the birds clean, healthy, and allows me to keep them safer from the many predators that we have here in Missouri. The breeding pens I have personally built are three foot wide by 8 foot long. The inside portion is two foot tall, this is plenty of room for my pairs or trios of call ducks. These particular pens are raised approximately two foot from the ground on legs and have a solid tin roof to protect them from the weather. Each breeding pen contains a house portion along the back half, a pen portion and then a pool for the call ducks.

I have used ground breeding pens in the past and they were a chore to keep clean. Ducks LOVE to play in water and on the ground water equals mud. This mud then gets onto eggs, and it becomes a cycle of constantly cleaning and maintaining the mess. With raised breeding pens, there is no mess! It is clean, easy to maintain, and the birds are just as happy but much cleaner!

So with this in mind I highly recommend trying raised breeding pens, I think you will be pleasantly surprised. I will be providing a template and plans on building these amazing pens in our online store soon, so go check it out!