I prefer cedar shavings you can get them at a pet store for cheap I clean mine out in February and then again after the first hatching
I’m not convinced it really matters what you use. I’ve used pine, cedar, basswood, maple, whatever chips you have will be fine. Prepackaged livestock bedding or pet bedding is easy because you vacant get it in the plastic bales. Otherwise a 5-gallon pail of loose chips will usually get you half a dozen boxes worth. Anything is better than nothing. But I have had them nest in nothing as well.
I see many destroyed boxes. The sheet metal state made ones that are like fort knox. Trees fall onto them. Sometimes they just get bent a little or knocked over. They get totally destroyed most of the time. Perhaps I will go on a quest and repair some. The state is using plastic ones now.
@Peakebrook The first one we lost was on an old cedar pole just off the navigation channel. It had probably been there 50 years. The area up there has a lot of old abandoned poles from the early resort and fisheries days that we hang boxes on. Anyways, an inattentive/drunk boater hit the pole, smashed up the box, busted the beam off at the waterline. I was bummed, that was a productive box. The other was a victim of the ice. We placed it too close to the main lake with no real natural protection. When that ice sheet decides it’s time to go and the wind gets fired up nothings going to stop it. I would say up there our biggest hazards are ice and snowmobiles. You can’t really control either. Here at home I still run into ice issues. I have a couple that I need to pull and relocate every couple three years. But the biggest issue here is kids. I have found several boxes that are shot up. They seem to be targets.
Our tourists out kayaking & canoeing rip the tops off them so the poor wood ducks aren,t trapped. Stubid S.O.B.,s
Installs, repairs, and service today at my parents/brothers place. We now have 15boxes spread out over the coarse of about a mile. A mix between tree boxes 8-12’ off the ground to cedar poles from abandoned commercial fishing operations from days gone by. We had an 80% success rate last season.
