Waterfowl

[SwampCat]

Very nice,I picked up wire today to build 7 mallard nest and I have 5 wood duck boxes to get put up.Anyone else do any duck habitat work

First picture is a four acre old oxbow. Mostly let it grow natural food - smartweeds. I usually have to pump this one. Next picture is a five acre old beaver pond we cleared out and plant with millet. I pump it out in July to plant. About half the time it will refill itself by duck season - if not, I pump. Next hole is natural food, flooded when river comes up. This year it had good water about 20 days of the sixty day season. Have another fifteen acre hole we plant with millet and another two acre hole we plant with millet. Ten inch pto pump moves 3500 gallons per minute. One acre foot of water in just over an hour and a half.

 

[Telemark]

Very nice,I picked up wire today to build 7 mallard nest and I have 5 wood duck boxes to get put up.Anyone else do any duck habitat work

I've just started. I have access to some lakes that attract mallards and a few other species. Some guys put out a couple mallards nests, but I didn't notice any activity. How do you build yours? Do you clean them out in winter?

 

[Catscratch]

Very nice,I picked up wire today to build 7 mallard nest and I have 5 wood duck boxes to get put up.Anyone else do any duck habitat work

First picture is a four acre old oxbow. Mostly let it grow natural food - smartweeds. I usually have to pump this one. Next picture is a five acre old beaver pond we cleared out and plant with millet. I pump it out in July to plant. About half the time it will refill itself by duck season - if not, I pump. Next hole is natural food, flooded when river comes up. This year it had good water about 20 days of the sixty day season. Have another fifteen acre hole we plant with millet and another two acre hole we plant with millet. Ten inch pto pump moves 3500 gallons per minute. One acre foot of water in just over an hour and a half.

View attachment 27800
View attachment 27801View attachment 27802View attachment 27803View attachment 27804

Wow!

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[Kdog]

We end today. Set up in the swamp, and as we were putting out the decoys around 30 geese came over us. Saw nothing else in the cold rain.

We have 7 wood duck boxes spread out here and there that we put out 5 years ago. Last season was the best hatch rate we have had. I have two more boxes we need to get out sometime.

 

[H20fwler]

Very nice,I picked up wire today to build 7 mallard nest and I have 5 wood duck boxes to get put up.Anyone else do any duck habitat work

Yep, we put in two wetland ponds a few years ago put three wood duck boxes up on them. Also have a natural vernal pool that runs down the middle of our woods we are adding two nest boxes to it in the next month. We planted a bunch of button brush and jap millet around ponds and have some really good stands of water plantain and duckweed in the ponds. Have helped a good friend of mine put up and maintain over a dozen woody boxes on his property along the river.

Years ago I used to do a lot of the wood duck trapping and banding for the state at our local refuge and we helped every summer banding geese when my boys were young.

 

[buckdeer1]

I am going to use the plans that Delta waterfowl has on their site except will build my mallard box base out of pvc then go down with a 1 1/2 inch pvc bolted to channel post drove in bottom is the plan right now.Am picking up rest of material tomorrow.For wire I take a 7ft x 3ft piece of cage wire 1/2x1/2 squares make a roll out of 3ft and hog ring then fill with hay and wrap remaining 4 ft and hog ring then mount on my cradle.This is my first time building them but from what I have read they need restocked with hay in late fall.My wood duck boxes I will mount on 8ft chainlink corner post driven into pond bottom.I will be setting mine around cattails where it is only a couple ft deep.Building now and will put up as soon as DR takes walking boot away

 

[Telemark]

That Delta hen house looks like something I could easily make and maintain here. Do you have to unroll and rebuild them each season?

 

[buckdeer1]

I think you would have to do some maintenance even if it's just adding grass.I picked up all my material today and it should be just a matter of untying the wire that holds nest tunnel to frame and repacking.I am using hog rings for most of my wire ties but will use some black tie wraps.I have all my wire cut and the first 3ft roll done will pick up hay tomorrow to fill and make brackets.Heres some wood duck boxes I put together today

 

[buckdeer1]

Heres the cage part of the mallard nest tubes,take a 7x3 ft piece of wire and fold a 3ft length into a inner circle and secure then lay hay on rest and roll the remaining 4ft and secure then put hay inside inner tube for nest.I made my frame out of PVC,I had to mix electrical conduit and plumbing so I will use universal glue or the green.I did in 3/4 except the bottom that attaches to post is 3/4 x 1 and I am wanting to find adapter to change 1 to 1 1/4 then I will attach whatever length of 1 1/4 PVC I need to get my height off a 7ft channel post

 

[buckdeer1]

Heres the cage part of the mallard nest tubes,take a 7x3 ft piece of wire and fold a 3ft length into a inner circle and secure then lay hay on rest and roll the remaining 4ft and secure then put hay inside inner tube for nest.I made my frame out of PVC,I had to mix electrical conduit and plumbing so I will use universal glue or the green.I did in 3/4 except the bottom that attaches to post is 3/4 x 1 and I am wanting to find adapter to change 1 to 1 1/4 then I will attach whatever length of 1 1/4 PVC I need to get my height off a 7ft channel post

 

[WeedyJ]

I may have to break down and get some boxes out. Over the last 3 years I have been spending days in my 35 acres of wetland trying to understand the water flow in order to control it. Finally piped the beaver dams that are the keys last year, so I should be able to get in there and work early this year. Used to have a ton of smartweed, and some type of grass that lacerates your skin if you brush through it. Got rid of most of that and planted 3 acres Jap millet and some rice. Got the rice out too late, but the jap millet was going great. Then...that's when I found out what armyworms were. Gone in a week. TONS of sweltering work to get that stand only to watch it go away in a week! So no natural or artificial food this year.

Has not been a good year at my place this year. No mallards and few woodies. Used to have a roost where 400-500 birds would come in every night. Neighbors leased land to some yahoos who shot the sh** out of it and now birds have gone :-( . I went out on the pond where the roost is on my last day this year. Geese already on the pond so had to sneak in. I hid behind standing bushes, and would ease toward the open water every time they would get noisy. Spent 3 hours in belly deep water listening to them 60 yds away on the other side of the bush. Just sat and listened as they chatted with other groups in the area. Waited for 3 hour and finally got 3 minutes of shooting. Missed every one :-) It was like the opening scene of Dances with Wolves! Should've had 4. Didn't know Goose Fever was a thing! Anyway, was the most fun I've had in the water, excluding hot tubs with women, just listening to them and hiding from them as they socialized!

 

[buckdeer1]

I have alot of duck weed and cattails,also have beaver but the previous landowner swears that after they trapped all the beaver last time the swamp went dry,I will trap 3-4 as they are chewing alot of trees.I will put some of the mallard tubes and a wood duck box where we can watch from a little ways away.

 

[Catscratch]

I have alot of duck weed and cattails,also have beaver but the previous landowner swears that after they trapped all the beaver last time the swamp went dry,I will trap 3-4 as they are chewing alot of trees.I will put some of the mallard tubes and a wood duck box where we can watch from a little ways away.

Beavers are a never ending saga. They will portage dry land for quite a ways to get to water. It's a never ending problem on our watershed and creeks.

 

[H20fwler]

I think you would have to do some maintenance even if it's just adding grass.I picked up all my material today and it should be just a matter of untying the wire that holds nest tunnel to frame and repacking.I am using hog rings for most of my wire ties but will use some black tie wraps.I have all my wire cut and the first 3ft roll done will pick up hay tomorrow to fill and make brackets.Heres some wood duck boxes I put together todayView attachment 27827

Those look great! I have read that hen woodies prefer the wood boxes to other materials, I really like the cedar.
I am putting two up this weekend in our vernal pool but they will be the fiberglass capsules, they won’t be in the direct sun with the woods canopy shading them so shouldn’t get to hot. Woody boxes are a very fun project and very beneficial to have on property. Besides wood ducks and hooded mergansers nesting during spring and summer, in the fall/winter we get screech owls at times using ours not to nest but just to hide in and get out of the weather.

 

[buckdeer1]

Have you had luck with the fiberglass boxes

 

[H20fwler]

Yes, that’s pretty much all the state uses here on our local lake.
We have put around a dozen of them up on my buddies farm along the river about ten miles from my place and his get used pretty good. I got all of his from the state.

 

[OakSeeds]

I spent 10 years involved in waterfowl production; mainly geese but with some ducks. Attached are a sample of nesting structures.

 

[buckdeer1]

Great goose pics,my swamp doesn't have alot of geese,do you have pics of your boxes

 

[OakSeeds]

Great goose pics,my swamp doesn't have alot of geese,do you have pics of your boxes

Besides the Delta Waterfowl "hen houses" ... grass encased in a roll of wire and mounted on a post (your #170 post above BD), most of my nesting structures involved the end 1/3 of either metal or plastic 55-gal drums. Metal is better; the sun (UV rays) break down plastic and it cracks. I used metal shears to cut the metal barrels (slices through them like butter) and drilled drain holes in the bottom of the "can." I mounted these barrel nesting cans on a bunch of different floating items - as a base - including sections of telephone poles with 4 X 4 treated lumber base on top of the 2 parallel poles bolted together with L-shaped pieces of steel, pallets stuffed with styrofoam, custom made 2' X 4' pieces of roofing styrofoam wrapped in coil stock, and inflated truck tires (tires didn't work very well - ride too low in the water). In addition, I hung them on poles driven into the bottom of the lake/pond and I lag bolted some to trees that were in the water. If you get the nest off the bank and in the water, your predation from mammals goes way down. I used wood chips and straw for nesting materials; the taller the sides of the can, the less problem I seemed to have with avian predators. Biggest problem .... lots of different fish (muskies, bass, flatheads, etc) like to eat very small geese.

 

[buckdeer1]

Were the barrels mostly for geese