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WINTER PASTIMES

by with No Comment DucksGardenProjectsRanch-House

BRRRRR! IT’S COLD OUTSIDE!

What do we do all winter long? Winter 2019-2020 has been colder, with fewer sunny days than the previous winters we have been here. It seems longer! Today is one of those gloomy, snowy days. The past few days have been warm enough to melt quite a bit of snow & create quite a bit of mud in the process. The driveway & paths around the house are quite muddy!

Today the ducks are all snuggled together, bills under their wings for added warmth. The ducks’ paddock has been like this much of the winter, iced up and snowy.  When it isn’t frozen, it’s muddy and messy. Most winters there are warm days I get out the pool for them, but not this winter!

The garden sits idle, snow drifted up to the top edge of the raised beds. I won’t be going out there any time soon, and I suspect it may be much later than usual before I can get out there to begin springtime chores. Indoors there has been plenty of time to order seeds and plan the garden.

Tim’s big project this winter has been handcrafting a new set of aspen furniture for us. So far he has made three end tables (one of them a unique triangle shape) and a TV stand. These are beautiful and add a homey Colorado look to our home.

When Tim isn’t in his workshop creating our aspen furniture, he’s often indoors on the computer, working on one project or another. Laurie has spent a lot of time this winter on this website, spiffing it up and learning a LOT about website design. On days like this, Goldie & KK are in the house with us, keeping warm and not wanting to miss out on what we’re doing. Laurie has also picked up crochet, and made the blanket KK sits on.

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LIGHTING FOR EGG PRODUCTION

by with No Comment Ducks

FIRST EGGS FROM CURRENT DUCKS

Our newest ducks have begun to lay! We received our first oval gift, 1/21/20, and the second came 4 days later. The ducks are now about 23-24 weeks old. These ducks are a week apart in age, and we have no way of knowing which ducks have layed the eggs, but we’re delighted that our lighting program has worked, and we are now getting those delicious eggs.

LIGHTS FOR EGGS
As Tim says, we’re running a duck sweat shop here by using artificial lighting to increase egg production. Lighting is added to the ducks’ paddock and inside their house on timers to increase the number of hours of light the ducks will see each day. Using the lighting guidelines found on the Metzer Farms Blog, we began gradually adding lights on 12/15, when the ducks were 18-19 weeks old. Our goal was to reach 16 hours per day by the time they would be 23-24 weeks old. 

Civil Twilight here on June 21 (Summer Solstice) is just about 16 hours per day, from 5:02am to 9:00pm. This is easily found at timeanddate.com. So, our goal here is to reach that amount of light per day and keep it there throughout the laying season, until we want to give them a break from laying to molt. That’ll be in August or September. After the molt, we’ll rev up the lights again for a new season of eggs, prior to spring and earlier than they would naturally lay.

On December 15th, when the lighting program began, our Civil Twilight was about 10 1/2 hours per day, from 6:40am to 5:08pm. So on that day, the lights were set to come on at 6:30am and off at 5:30pm. Every 4 days after, I’d increase by 15 minutes each morning and 15 minutes each evening. As of 1/24, they’re getting the full 16 hours of light per day.

As you can see, this lighting program has worked, and ducks are now laying. With our “Duckagon” I am able to open up the top each morning to reach in and grab eggs. If the eggs are on the far side, I have my nifty claw to shove them over.

In past years we have added light as well, but previously we only added it in the morning. It got to the point that the lights were coming on around 2:30 or 3 am. That just seemed too early! Most of the experts recommend adding light for both morning and evening–we’ve just never done it. This seems much better. We just make sure they are locked in their paddock in the evening, to take advantage of the additional light there. And, as always, they are locked in their house at night, and receive the full benefit of the light bulb inside.

Now we look forward to getting 5 eggs in a day, to know that all the girls are in full swing! The ducks are now kept in their paddock until 9-10 am just to be sure we’ve gotten all the eggs. Normally eggs are laid before I get out to feed them, but occasionally there’s a late layer. Sometimes, after they’ve been let out to roam (they are free-range, after all) we find eggs in strange places: under trees or bushes, usually. This year, Tim tried crafting a next box for them to see if they’d like to put their eggs there. No eggs in that box yet (they’ve always been in the house early) but we have seen ducks take turns sitting in that box for a bit!

No, we don’t eat 5 eggs each day! We had only intended to have 4 ducks, but ended up with 5. Four would have given us 3-4 eggs per day, which would have been plenty for the two of us. With extra eggs, we give Goldie, our dog, an egg for breakfast, so she eats less dog food. We also occasionally give them away or freeze them for future use.

Ducks

THE 2016 SIX-PACK HAS RETIRED

by with No Comment 2019 Five DucksDucksSix-Pack of Ducks
Coco & Whitey – the last two

Our “Six-Pack” of ducks from 2016 is no longer with us. For various reasons, we have culled the flock one by one. Most of them were removed because they had stopped laying eggs, or laid only soft-shell eggs. We began raising our small, 2019 flock of ducklings while we still had two remaining “big ducks” from 2016, but in short time they were culled because they were just too crabby and no fun to have around.

Coco (Chocolate Runner) spent most of her waking hours hunched up with her feathers ruffled, quacking-quacking-quacking. Most of the time she looked like the right photo. It was unbearable.

 

Coco–scrunched & unhappy

Our other adult, Whitey, had been our best layer and generally a calm duck. But, after we’d culled two others, leaving just Coco & Whitey, Whitey began to quack just as much as Coco. Thinking Coco had infected her with crabbiness, we got rid of Coco first and attempted to calm Whitey down. Tim would sit on the ground to feed her out of a bowl located by his lap. At first, she would continue to quack and go hungry, because she was unwilling to come near. We tried holding her in our laps until she calmed down. A couple of days after starting this process, she was much quicker to come and eat quietly. There was some improvement, and we hoped she would return to being her calmer self, but even after a few days it just didn’t help calm her down. Whenever we would walk nearby or past her even at some distance, she would still quack like crazy. It just wasn’t worth the effort to continue working with her, not knowing if our efforts would calm her down.

With the baby ducklings growing, we decided to cut our losses with the old, and bring up the new flock without their influence. We are hoping these new ducks will be happier, quieter, calmer.

 

 

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2019 FLOCK OF FIVE

by with No Comment 2019 Five DucksDucks
Coco & Whitey, 2 Remaining Ducks

The six ducks we’ve raised since August 2016 had dwindled down to two good layers, so we recently decided to get a flock of new ducklings to start raising while the two were still laying. As we awaited the arrival of the ducklings and began to raise them in the brooder, the two remaining layers became quite crabby and no fun to have around—perhaps they missed their friends or didn’t like being a flock of two. Since we had the new ducklings growing fast in the brooder, we decided to cull the remaining adults and start over. We just didn’t want the kids to learn bad habits from the big ducks (quacking uncontrollably whenever we walk near). Hopefully this new crew will be happier, quieter, and more friendly. We will work on that from the start!

We originally ordered four ducklings online from Metzer Farms. Metzer Farms now accommodates folks like us who only want a small number of ducklings. There is an extra fee for shipping small orders, but since we really don’t want 10 ducklings, we were willing to pay the extra shipping. We were able to get them sexed, and ordered females only.

Sadly, one of our baby ducklings didn’t make it through the first night at home. She was scrawny right out of the box, and not as active as the others. We had doubts she’d make it. Fortunately, Metzer Farms offers either a refund or replacement when ducklings do not survive the trip. They are unable to safely ship just one duckling, so she needed a companion duckling. They offer to send a “mystery” duckling free of charge, or one of our choice that we pay for. We chose a female of another breed we were interested in. They hatched just one week after the first 3, and we received them last week. Now we have 5 baby ducklings, growing fast in our care.

Metzer Farms’ website provides a nice comparison table of the duck breeds they sell, so we made our decision based on these observations. Our criteria for choosing duck breeds are:

  1. We want ducks that will lay the most eggs.
  2. We prefer calmer ducks that don’t quack too much.
  3. We want ducks that will forage and find their own food. We have 40 acres for them to explore, although they don’t go any farther than 1 or 2.
  4. Different colors. We want to be able to tell them apart at a glance. And Laurie likes pretty ducks.

We have chosen these five:

White Layer. One of the ducks we currently have is a white layer from Metzer Farms. She has been our most consistent layer and has a calm demeanor, even though she rates 6.7 on the temperament scale. (10 is high) She forages right along with the rest of the ducks, rated “Good” for foraging, and her all-white feathers make her easy to spot.

 

Golden 300 Hybrid Layer. Also bred at Metzer Farms, this duck promises to lay 200-290 eggs per year. She rates high on the temperament scale at 7.7, but we hope that the other calmer ducks will keep her in check. She should also be a “Good” forager, and will be a brownish color.

 

 

Silver Appleyard. This breed rates 1.2 for the calmest temperament, and “Very Good” at foraging. She won’t lay as many eggs, 120-175 per year, but hopefully her calm demeanor and foraging will encourage the others to follow suit. She will have mixed colors of white and brown.

 

 

 

Black Swedish. This should also be a calm duck, 2.3 on the scale. She should lay 130-180 eggs per year and be a “Good” forager. She will be predominantly black with a white chest. This is the one that didn’t survive, and we will receive a replacement next week.

 

 

Rouen. These ducks are known to be on the calm side, a 4.5 on the temperament scale. She should lay 140-180 eggs per year and should be a good forager. She may lay blue-green eggs, and should be a nice looking, dark brown duck.

 

 

This will be our fourth time to raise ducklings. We hope to pay more attention to their care than we have for the past couple of flocks, and keep better track of things like lighting schedules to promote better egg production. We also intend to pick them up  and hold them more often, particularly right at first, which may keep them a bit more friendly and calm. At this point (two weeks in) we have a happy little brood of ducklings!

 

 

 

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WINTER DUCKS

by with No Comment DucksSix-Pack of Ducks

Our ducks fare well even in the winters here at 9,000 feet. Our temperatures can range from roughly +60F to -20F. The other day it literally started out at -5F and reached +60F in the afternoon! Most often the sun is out at least a portion of the day, occasionally not. Sometimes it’s quite windy, other times not. Sometimes there is snow on the ground, other times not. No matter the weather, the ducks will usually spend most of the day outside, and often out foraging for whatever tidbits they might find. Only on the coldest days they might spend a good portion of the time in their house, outside of the wind and cold.

Ducks are quite well adapted for the cold. As water birds, the rain and snow are no problem for them. Their feathers shed off the water, and their down keeps them quite warm. I guess that’s why we make coats out of down with water resistant outer shells for ourselves!

With these cold temperatures the water does freeze, and winter adjustments need to be made. There are different ways of keeping the water liquid. My best solution is to keep a water heater in the bowl. It is on a timer, and usually turns on around 3am, so they will have water to drink in the morning. I turn it on occasionally during the day if the water is freezing, just for an hour or two off and on. The timer we have makes it easy to adjust like that. We keep our bowl on a raised platform over a hole in the ground, covered with hardware cloth. Normally the water will slowly drain from the hole into the earth. In winter this hole fills up with ice and never melts, so I need to be careful to empty the bowl without spilling more water into (onto) this hole. Recently I got out the flame thrower, melted the ice under the bowl as much as I could without burning the frame, then raised the bowl off the frame with an additional support to keep it from freezing onto the frame. I’ve found it’s helpful to keep all snow cleared from around the bowl as soon as possible. If not done, it quickly ices up and makes it nearly impossible to lift the bowl for emptying and refilling.

Notice the wire frame over the top of the bowl–this is not only to hold the electrical wire up (it goes upward to the framework of the pen), but also to keep the ducks out of the bowl. I keep this deeper bowl for them in the winter so they my dip their heads into deep water and keep their eyes clean, which is important. On occasional warm days I will fill a pool for them to bathe, but that doesn’t happen often.

Inside their house (the duckagon), I keep a heat lamp for the coldest of nights. It is on a thermostat and also a timer. The timer is set for the thermostat to come on at about the time we usually lock them in the house at night, and goes off around the time I usually let them out in the morning. The thermostat is now set for around 28F. I don’t want it running all the time, just on the coldest of nights, and often I find that even when it’s pretty cold, it’s in the 30’s, probably due to their own body heat keeping the house warm. When they were younger and it was getting cold, it was used more often and set at a higher temperature, but they are big girls now and can handle more cold. I keep one of the vents (under the roof edge) open most of the time, only closing it on the coldest of nights, maybe when it’s under 10 or so.

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“SIX-PACK” GROWS UP

by with No Comment DucksSix-Pack of Ducks

The “baby” ducklings are now 9 weeks old, and all grown up!

Nine Weeks Old

We just have the six ducks now. We gave away the two remaining Golden Cascades. It just seemed easier to deal with feeding and caring for the six young’uns. When we took the six-pack out to the big pen with the big ducks, we had a partition up the middle of both the house and the pen, to keep them separate. Besides requiring different feed, we weren’t sure how the bigger ducks would treat the smaller ones. When we did put them together in the same yard one afternoon, they basically avoided each other. It probably wouldn’t have been a problem, but we really didn’t want to keep 8 ducks–6 will be plenty.

They now happily enjoy going outside of the pen to forage, and have learned to make quite a racket when feeding time comes. Blackie is definitely the quackiest. According to information I had read, I thought that the Cayuga ducks (Blackie) were supposed to be quite calm, but not this one! Whitey is beautiful and the most photogenic. Harley and Quinn, the Welsh Harlequins, are quite calm and steady–if I look closely, I can tell them apart. The runners, Cocoa and Fawn, are cute–I expected them to be taller, but perhaps they haven’t finished growing. It’s nice having different colors, shapes and sizes, after previously getting ducks of the same breed.

In the past we have added lighting to the duck house in an attempt to get them to lay eggs as early as possible, but this time we don’t plan to add the lighting: we will let nature take its course and take the eggs when we get them. I expect to see eggs sometime around February, when the ducks are fully mature, spring is coming and they’re ready to lay.

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NEW DUCKLINGS COMING

by with No Comment DucksGolden CascadesSix-Pack of Ducks

It’s been a long time since the last duck update. We now have just two of the Golden Cascades, Gertrude and Spot.

After dealing with the prolapsed oviduct issues with Bess, then with Gertrude and Ellie May, we decided to remove Wily, our drake, from the flock in April. We weren’t sure we wanted to continue this breed, if the problems we’d had may be inherent with the breed. (Although, I wrote to Dave Holderread about these problems with 3 out of 4 of my ducks, and he had not heard of these problems with other Golden Cascades.) At any rate, whether Wily was causing these issues with his overactivity or not, it just seemed unnecessary to keep him. So, after separating him from the girls for a couple of weeks, off to the Wolf Sanctuary he went.

In May, Ellie’s prolapsed oviduct was so bad we had to let her go (another trip to the Wolf Sanctuary). Gertrude continued to have some prolapse issues (see previous posts), but continued to consistently lay eggs. Eventually the prolapse appeared all healed. She and Spot both continue to lay eggs faithfully, although Spot’s eggshells are soft and often punctured or crushed by the time I pick them up. Since Ellie left, they’ve both gotten awfully crabby! They quack and complain any time we go near them, hunker down and ruffle their feathers. They just don’t seem happy, and neither are we.

We decided to get some new ducklings, and at this time aren’t sure whether we will keep Gertrude and Spot. I will make that decision when they molt and take their yearly break–as long as they continue to lay I will keep them.

Chocolate Runner – Metzer Farms

On Wednesday, August 3, our shipment should arrive with the following 6 ducklings: 2 Welsh Harlequins, 1 Cayuga, 1 White Layer, 1 Chocolate Runner, 1 Fawn & White Runner.  We’re getting them from Metzer Farms this time. They add a heat pack to the shipping container to allow for a smaller minimum order to be sent safely. These ducklings will all be females, so we won’t need to deal with extra ducks or butchering the drakes. We had Welsh Harlequins before and were happy with them, and wanted to try some runner ducks as well as a variety of shapes and colors. Hopefully these will be fun!

I already have names picked out: Harley & Quinn, Blackie, Whitey, Cocoa, and Fawn. Go figure.

 

GERTRUDE’S PROGRESS

by with No Comment DucksGolden Cascades

Gertrude’s problems with her prolapsed oviduct continue. We had her in “lock-up”, the darkened duck house, separated from the other ducks, for three days. She continued looking good, so I let her out to join her friends.

After two days, the prolapse re-appeared, but not as bad. I ignored it for a couple of days, then put her back in the duck house, but not in the dark, just to keep her quiet and separate. I hoped that it would heal itself, but she kept laying eggs, and I think this aggravated the problem.

Finally, I soaked her again in a bath of epsom salts, re-applied the coconut oil & honey, and pushed the prolapsed area back in. There was some scabbiness, some of which fell off as I was massaging her. She went back to the darkened duck house.

The next day her egg had some blood on it, so I again treated her. She’s been in the darkened duck house now going on five days. Some days she looks better than others. She keeps laying eggs–today she laid TWO! I keep thinking that if she’d just stop laying eggs she could get better and we could save her. I finally got some hemorrhoid treatment, which is supposed to be helpful, so today I plan to treat her and put some of that on her.

I want this experience to be a success!

DUCKS CATCH MICE!

by with No Comment DucksGolden Cascades

A couple of times, I’ve found a dead mouse in the ducks’ paddock, and it looked a bit chewed. The other day it was pretty fresh, and I know that KK (the cat) hadn’t been in there. It had to have been the ducks. I’ve googled it, and sure enough, ducks do catch (and eat!) mice. I didn’t know we were getting more mousers when we got the ducks.

By the way, KK and the ducks get along quite well. I have no worries about leaving them out together. I think the ducks are too big and scary for KK to mess with them, and they actually are sometimes seen following her around. (Or, are they chasing her?)