What is our biggest need in Franklin County? If you ask our community leaders, the answer will be HOUSING – housing for the backlog of people who want to live in the relaxed, friendly culture of Mount Vernon but can’t find a place to live. And housing for the wave of new residents headed our way to support the economic expansion on the horizon.
But what about our ducks? We have close to 1000 duck boxes mounted on local lakes and ponds in Franklin County, and it’s not enough.
* Female wood ducks compete for the boxes. They get into brutal fights inside the box. The survivor wins the right to sit on the eggs for 30 lonely days and nights.
* Frequently, multiple ducks will lay eggs in the same box. When that happens, the eggs on the bottom of the pile don’t get enough heat to hatch on time. The babies that hatch late miss the opportunity to jump out of the box with their siblings when mama duck calls.
When baby ducks are too weak to climb the ladder inside the box and jump out on jump day, the owner of the box has a choice. If you know where Mama Duck took the babies that jumped, you can take the stranded babies and drop them in the water nearby. The baby will call for mama, and she will come get the baby and take it to rejoin the rest of the family.
If you don’t know where Mama took the babies, you are in the business of raising baby ducks. The baby ducks will come to see you as their mama, and they will bond with you. It is a very rewarding experience, but it will consume your life for 60 days until they fly off the lake.
The wood ducks, black-bellied whistling ducks, and hooded mergansers come here in late Fall and early winter to build a nest, lay eggs, and hatch their babies. They need more housing.
The wood ducks and mergansers nest in duck boxes mounted on ponds and lakes. The whistlers are very tame and will nest on ponds, lakes, or even in an urban setting.B.F. Hicks has whistlers that nest in duck boxes in his backyard.
If you are sitting outside in the evening at one of the restaurants on the Square, you will see whistlers in pairs flying overhead. They whistle instead of quacking, and they talk to each other as they fly.
For the last 20 years, we have been installing duck boxes made of white cedar mounted on a steel U post. The predator guard has been cut from sheet metal by C&S Air Conditioning on Hwy 37 in Mount Vernon. It has provided good housing, but over the years, the cost has risen to about $160 for the box, the predator guard, and the mounting materials.
But now, voila! A breakthrough in duck housing has arrived. It may not have the same impact on the global economy as Nvidia's AI chip, but it’s important to the ducks. It’s called Duck Hut.
The Duck Hut is manufactured in Iowa out of molded plastic. It has these advantages compared to what we’ve been doing.
* The box weighs less than 5 lbs., compared to 20 lbs. for the cedar box, so it is easier to mount.
* The box is built to be mounted on a 2” diameter aluminum pole that is lighter and easier to drive in the ground than the steel U post. Scott’s Lumber carries the pole and can cut it to your desired length, probably seven feet.
* The cedar duck box only lasts about 7 years in the sun and weather. We haven’t had time to prove how long the polyethylene Duck Hut will last, but it’s estimated to be 30 years.
* Duck Hut also sells a composite-material predator guard that is better and easier to use than the sheet-metal predator guard. The predator guard will keep the raccoons out.
* If you have 7-foot diamondback water snakes on your lake, you can drill a few holes in the predator guard, insert screws, and hang the netting we use to keep birds out of our tomato plants. That will block even the largest snakes from getting to the box.
* And… the cost of the Duck Hut plus the mounting materials is half the cost of what we’ve been doing with the cedar boxes.
The ducks that nest here start arriving in December, and the first egg gets laid in February. You’ve got time to get ready. Learn more about this evolutionary step forward on the Duck Hut website at www.duckhut.com
