Ducks Face Predators From Every Direction
A fence, in the ordinary sense, is not enough for Khaki Campbell ducks. These small, prolific layers are light-bodied and poor fliers, they cannot outrun a fox or fight off a raccoon, and their predator list comes from all sides: foxes and dogs digging and rushing from the ground, raccoons climbing and reaching from the sides, and hawks and owls dropping from above into any open-topped pen. A Khaki Campbell run has to be a complete enclosure — floor edge, walls, and roof all considered — rather than a boundary line.
The good news is that ducks are creatures of routine. They will put themselves into a secure house at dusk for food and water if the routine is consistent, which makes a lock-up system genuinely workable.
Hardware Cloth, Not Chicken Wire
Build the run from hardware cloth with small openings, fixed firmly to a frame. Raccoons reach through wide mesh and pull ducks to the wire; they also untwist light wire with patient hands. Chicken wire's real job is only to mark a boundary for poultry — it bends, rusts, and tears under a dog's charge, so never count it as the protective layer, though it can line the inside of stronger mesh to keep duck heads from poking out.
Extend protection at the base with a skirt of hardware cloth buried down or turned outward flat under the soil, so a digging fox meets mesh wherever it starts. Cover the whole run with the same cloth or a solid roof; netting alone may deter a hawk's first stoop but will not stop a raccoon walking the top rails at night.
The Night House Is the Real Stronghold
Whatever the run's size, the ducks' safety after dark depends on a solid house: wooden or similarly sturdy walls, a door that bolts rather than merely latches, ventilation openings covered in hardware cloth, and no gap at the floor where a mink or rat could slip through and panic the flock. Campbells should be shut in from dusk until morning, every night, including the evenings when they seem reluctant — a fox needs only the one forgotten night.
Place a shallow water container for the night routine outside or in a drained corner of the run rather than a deep pond in the enclosure; open water near the fence draws visiting wildlife and softens the ground your skirt depends on.
Daily Signs Around a Duck Run
Read the run each morning as you release the ducks: feathers scattered outside the wire point to a reach-through attempt, bent cloth at one corner shows where something climbed, and tracks in the mud by the water are a visitor log. Ducks who suddenly resist going in at dusk, or who sleep pressed to the house wall instead of spreading out, have often noticed something you have not yet.
Repair cloth with patches of the same material fixed on both sides, and replace rusted sections before they become the weak point a raccoon finds first.
With KinsLe Care Teams, the dusk lock-up, morning release, and weekly hardware-cloth inspection for your Khaki Campbells can be assigned by name and time-stamped when done, so the routine these ducks depend on survives busy evenings.