Delta Waterfowl Expanding Hen House Program

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A large grant will help Delta Waterfowl send more ducks winging south from prairie Canada.

The Manitoba Conservation Trust announced plans this month to fund the construction and maintenance of 150 new mallard-producing Hen Houses in southwest Manitoba.  Since its founding in 2018, the Trust has consistently rallied behind the mission of The Duck Hunters Organization.

“The new Delta Hen Houses will help add mallards to the 2022 fall flight and every year thereafter,” said Jim Fisher, senior director of Canadian conservation and hunting policy for Delta Waterfowl. “This is an exciting addition to the 500 Hen Houses that the Manitoba Conservation Trust has previously funded, which were already installed and ready to make ducks in time for last spring.”

The grant was awarded by the Manitoba Habitat Heritage Corporation, a former federal corporation that’s now a non-profit entity administering Manitoba’s Conservation Trust. The Conservation Trust has a $204 million endowment that has distributed more than $18 million to conservation in just a few short years, including $8 million in 2021 alone.

“We are grateful to the MHHC for its generous gift toward Delta’s duck production efforts,” Fisher said. “This grant will certainly benefit Manitobans, but also hunters farther down the flyways.”

Hen Houses, which are used primarily by mallards, are wire nesting cylinders placed over water in small wetlands. Delta focuses nest structures in wetland areas with limited nesting cover where predators such as red foxes, raccoons and skunks easily find duck nests in sparse patches of grass. Past research in Manitoba has shown that mallards using Hen Houses are 12 times more likely to hatch a nest than those nesting in the grass.

Hen Houses are proven, cost-efficient tools that add mallards to the fall flight. Delta currently has more than 8,500 Hen Houses in the United States and Canada, which produce an estimated 40,000 hatched ducklings annually.

For more information, contact Jim Fisher, senior director of Canadian conservation and hunting policy for Delta Waterfowl, at (877) 667-5656 or jfisher@deltawaterfowl.org.

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