So, today we finally got started building “Duckingham Palace” more or less off of the description & picture from Four-Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman. After much debate and numerous drawings, we finally started. This shows my dad with the inital framing and figuring out the doorway. We built two houses – one for us and our 8 ducks, and one for our neighbors and his 5.
Here you can see the inital framing is done, along with the floor & hardware cloth nailed down.
Here you can see we have both frames done, and are starting to frame out the doors & add hardware cloth on the front. Kevin & Bob
Now we have two sides and the roof on!
Here you can see both sides, the roof, door and hardware cloth all installed – just one more side to go!!
My dad’s cutting the last of the boards needed to side the palace!
Kevin’s adding the last door.
Andros standing on the ramp, while dad puts the finishing touches on one of the palace’s.
A rear-view of one of the houses, with wheels (though, they aren’t attatched – the axle is actually just a little bit short – so we’ll have to get a new one). Dad, Kevin & Bob.
A sideview of a duckhouse – all but finished!! Dad, Kevin & Andros and Bob.
Bob, Dad, Kevin & Andros & I behind one of the duckhouses at the very end of the day! I think they turned out beautifully!!
Just for the sake of cuteness and reference, 14 Indian Runner Ducklings, at about 5 days old (orderd from Murray McMurray Hatchery, they arrived on thursday the 28th of May, 2009)
And just cause’ its cute – Andros in a duckhouse!!
Todo en Tiempo 
December 17, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Nice job! I am curious how the wheel brackets worked. Eliot Coleman describes two positions for the wheels, but I can’t visualize how that works. What was your experience with that?
March 24, 2010 at 7:42 pm
Thanks for posting this. I’m going to try to put one of these together tomorrow, and the under-construction pictures really help. I still haven’t figured out how the wheels will work, though.
March 24, 2010 at 7:47 pm
We just attatched wheels with a bracket and have the front set up on blocks to keep it level-ish… That said, our ducks have taken to the old chicken coop and so we haven’t been using duckingham palace for a few months now. Our neighbors (who we built these with) figured some other bracket system out for the wheels, so his actually sits flat on the ground as described in the book. Good luck!!
April 8, 2011 at 12:04 pm
Thanks so much for the pictures. I got the original desire to have ducks from a book I bought on cold frame gardening. He had a discription…but your pictures will make it much easier!
April 9, 2011 at 8:52 am
Quick questions: Even though you did not use the duck house 1) Where did you plan for the ducks to roost? 2) Is there a door on top for easy egg retrieval?
April 9, 2011 at 8:16 pm
We did use the duckhouse some for a while, and it worked out quite well. My dad ended up being (apparently) allergic/intollerant to duck eggs, so we got rid of them after just a short while.
As for roosting, ducks don’t roost like chickens, but rather nest on the ground – so they just curled up on the floor of the duck house. And the houses as you can see actually turned out pretty small – you can easily reach one hand back inside to retreive the eggs.
We’re contemplating getting chickens and putting a couple roosts in and maybe a nest box or two on the back, though its not looking likely that’ll occur this year. But who knows 🙂
February 7, 2013 at 7:55 pm
Shout out from MD! Working on a presentation for the Master Gardeners this weekend and referring people to this blog post for the great pictures and instructions! This is what we tried to build ourselves and it didn’t work too well. But this is a great design and when we build version 2 we’re totally going to try to replicate what you’ve done. Thanks!!
February 8, 2013 at 8:56 am
Fantastic! Our palace is still in decent condition, though its not been used in a while… Good luck!!