Outdoors
The BDN outdoors section brings readers into the woods, waters and wild places of Maine. It features stories on hunting, fishing, wildlife, conservation and recreation, told by people who live these experiences. This section emphasizes hands-on knowledge, field reports, issues, trends and the traditions that define life outside in Maine. Read more Outdoors stories here.
You know birdhouses, and you may have spotted a duck box on a tree at the edge of a pond, but there’s another type of duck house called a hen house.
I installed one in a pond near my home, and it has now been used successfully three times.
To my knowledge, based on conversations with biologists and friends, this is the only hen house in Maine known to have been used successfully by nesting mallards.
Hen houses are straw-lined tubes mounted on poles over water to help protect nesting mallards from predators. Mallards typically nest on the ground, making both hens and their eggs vulnerable to raccoons, skunks, foxes and other predators.
I had built and installed duck boxes for wood ducks and mergansers, but every year I saw hen mallards with ducklings on the ponds near my home. I wanted to build something to help them nest.
After doing some research, I contacted my duck box-building friends, Eric and Missy Bartlett, and asked whether they had any experience with hen houses. They had built and installed a couple and agreed to sell me one. In the winter of 2022, we installed it in a small pond in my backyard.
It sat unused for three years. I had mostly given up on maintaining it, and there wasn’t much straw left.
Then, in the spring of 2025, I noticed a dark shape in the tube. It was a hen mallard.
She pulled down whatever straw remained, added her own feathers and built a nest. Because I could see the tube from my bathroom window, I checked on it often. At first, she visited for short periods while laying eggs. By mid-April, she had started incubating them and spent nearly all day and night on the nest, leaving only briefly to feed.
After nearly a month, she left one morning to feed and I spotted ducklings hopping around inside the tube.
That evening, my family watched as the hen left the nest one last time. She swam beneath the tube, calling softly. One by one, 12 ducklings launched themselves into the pond below and swam to their mother.
Unlike songbirds, which hatch helpless and remain in the nest for an extended period, waterfowl hatch with their eyes open and covered in down. Within hours, they can swim and feed themselves.
A few weeks later, another hen mallard nested in the same tube. A month later, her eggs hatched as well.
This year, another mallard has successfully nested and hatched a clutch. I was able to capture the ducklings jumping from the nest on a game camera. Listen closely and you can hear their tiny quacks.
A waterfowl conservation nonprofit called Delta Waterfowl began building and installing hen houses in 1991. Today, it maintains more than 16,000 hen houses across the Prairie Pothole Region of the northwestern United States and Canada, where more than half of North America’s migratory waterfowl nest.
According to Delta Waterfowl, a hen nesting in a hen house is 20% more likely to survive than a hen nesting on the ground. She is also 12 times more likely to hatch her clutch.
How to build and maintain a hen house
Hen houses are made from a 7-foot by 3-foot section of welded wire fencing that is double-rolled and packed with straw. Don’t use chicken wire because it’s not rigid enough. The opening should be about 12 inches wide. Anything larger may attract nesting geese.
The tube sits on a steel cradle mounted atop an 8-foot pipe driven into the pond bottom.
Building a hen house can be expensive because it requires steel and specialized welding skills. For detailed instructions, search online for “Delta Waterfowl hen house.”
Hen houses should be installed over shallow water or streams with the openings positioned perpendicular to prevailing winds. They may be installed on public waters as long as they do not interfere with safe navigation.
If possible, place a hen house where you have previously seen mallards with ducklings.
Maintenance is easiest during winter when the water is frozen. Remove old nesting material and eggshells, then replace the bedding and add fresh straw as needed.
Happy hatching!
