Boy Blue

As I mentioned in the August 1 post, we’ve been planning to butcher the drakes and are making plans to do so this tomorrow.  Tim has a friend who is a hunter, who will come help Tim learn to skin and clean the ducks.  It’s time to decide which drake we will keep for breeding.

A few days ago, I picked up one of the drakes out in the yard, and he was so calm in my arms, we decided he’d be the one to live.  We tagged him to keep track of him, and it happened to be a blue tag.  We’ve been calling him Blue Boy, Boy Blue, or just Blue.   A couple of days ago, Blue had a little mishap.  The ducks had been in the garden area, and at feeding time I was herding them up the path when Blue fell off the brick wall, to the left of the tall grape vine, and landed in the plants.  He got himself out, went to the patio, and managed to get himself up the brick wall to the right.  I was surprised he could get up there.  He flapped his wings and kind of crawled up at the same time.

Unfortunately, he was limping after that!  Now we call him Gimpy.  His limp has gotten better, but he still trips a lot, especially when the group is traveling fast.  We think it’s best not to keep a lame duck, so poor old Gimpy will have to meet his fate with the others.

Here’s one last shot of 10 ducks enjoying their pool.  Soon there will only be 6.