Posts in category: Ducks

Welsh Harlequin Drake, 17 weeks old

The ducks are now 17 weeks old.  They are now looking like adults, with the most obvious difference being the Welsh Harlequin drake, with his pretty green head and black butt and curly tail.  He’s quite handsome!  Whitey also now has his curly tail, and must weigh twice as much as the others.  I haven’t weighed him, but he’s awfully heavy in comparison to everyone else.  The girls aren’t very different from the last photo I posted, but I’ll post a couple with them anyway.

Duck House, with nest boxes at the left

Ducks behind house

We have completed the exterior of the duck house and painted it.  The ducks pretty much have their daily routine.  They are locked inside their house at night, let out to their paddock for breakfast and a morning swim.  The cat gets to go outside at this time, while the
ducks are locked in the paddock.        Later on, the cat comes in the house, and the ducks go out to the larger yard for foraging and lounging under the shade of trees or behind their house.  Sometime in the late afternoon, they begin to squawk and beg for dinner.  Sometimes they get to enter the garden, where they head immediately to the tomatoes, which they seem to enjoy eating.  Sometimes I’ll take them a handful of cherry tomatoes and throw them out to them one at a time for a game.  The two drakes are the most eager to snap at them.  In the late evening, after dinner and around dusk, we’ll lock them back in the paddock for safety, and sometime before we head to bed, we lock them back into their house for the night.  If we leave their access door open for them, they’ll put themselves to bed, and we don’t need to herd them in.

One of the “Silver” Welsh Harlequin females

We are anxiously awaiting the first eggs, which we expect to see sometime around 20-24 weeks of age, per various resources.  We will start increasing their daytime light artificially next week, to indicate that it’s getting lighter, and therefore time to commence laying eggs.  We’ll see how that goes!  We’ll also be putting some fake eggs in the next boxes to show them where they should put them.  Again, we’ll see how that goes.

“Golden” Welsh Harlequin female

Whitey, of course, is still the one standing out of the crowd, and is quite handsome with his curly tail.

Whitey, the White Appleyard Male

Friday night we had our first duck dinner.  We marinated it and grilled it.  It was pretty good. We each had a breast and felt it was plenty.  The next day we each finished off a thigh/leg piece.  I’m still not sure it’s worth all the work to raise and butcher them for so little meat.  If we do, we’ll raise a larger breed for meat, like Whitey, an Appleyard.  We’ll have to keep thinking about it.

DUCK MARINADE FOR GRILLING
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
2 Tblsp. olive oil
1/2 tsp. hot sauce
2 Tblsp. minced garlic
1/4 tsp. black pepper
Mix together and marinate duck pieces at least 30 minutes or overnight.

Here are the remainder of our flock, six happy ducks.  I’m not sure if they miss their friends, or wonder where they went.  This morning they were reluctant to come out of the house, then when I tried to walk them out to the big yard they didn’t want to go.  A couple of them ran back into the paddock and I had a hard time herding them out the gate.  Maybe they thought they would never come back.  They’ll get over it.  This afternoon they are sitting peacefully together under a tree.

I cleaned the duck house and pool this morning.  Hopefully we won’t have to do that quite as often with fewer ducks.  They’ve begun their first molt and are already losing the feathers they just got.  Seems unfair in a way.  Today I noticed the feathers that are falling out are getting bigger.  Sad.  But when the new feathers grow, they should be more colorful, so that will be fun.

Today was Drake Day.  Tim and a friend butchered four of the drakes.  I wasn’t watching, so will spare the details unless Tim wants to add a post on that.  All went well for a first time.  Probably we will try one of them for dinner tomorrow after aging overnight.

After all the work, I hope it’s good! They’re awfully small, and the two of us probably won’t get more than one meal out of them.  They were around 4-4.5 lbs alive, and 1.5 lbs cleaned and ready to cook.  A lot of that is bone and back parts that will probably go into soup stock.

The latest morning routine is to come out of the house with wings flapping.  I don’t know if it’s just to stretch and enjoy the fresh air, or to say “good morning” to the day, or to say “I want food.”  It’s cute.  See the video.

Eight Weeks Old and “On The Move”

The ducks are eight weeks old today.  They are still a joy to watch, particularly in the pool or when they are out foraging.  They enjoy being out in the “big yard” with all the weeds and grass they can eat.  They no longer get “lunch” from me, they find it on their own, and are now fed only twice a day.

They’re getting so big!  I enjoy just watching them and seeing how their feathers tuck up so neatly against their bodies and under the lower feathers that come up from their breast/abdomen.  The feathers are so soft, and the speculum feathers are beginning to turn dark blue.  In the morning when they get out of their house, they stand tall, stretch and flap their wings, which gives us a chance to see how much the wing feathers have grown.  Quite an improvement from the little stubs they had when they were little.

Soon we will be downsizing our flock, by learning to butcher and clean the drakes.  It does seem like messy business, but I think it’s right to be more intimately connected to our food sources.  These ducks have been treated respectfully and will be to the end.  I’m still likely to keep Whitey, just because he’s the mellowest and most fun to watch.  We’re also considering keeping one of the WH drakes for breeding purposes, although we need to think more about that.  If we breed, we’d probably attempt to allow one of the hens to set and hatch the eggs rather than bring them indoors to an incubator.  Don’t know.  More research and thinking will be necessary to decide.

Here is a better video showing our new fenced yard for the ducks.  Tim kindly mentioned that the last one was boring, and I agree.  I’ve deleted the previous one.  This one gives a better shot of the ducks at their current size and shows the new yard that they are learning to enjoy.  At 6 1/2 weeks old, they’re getting pretty big.  They now freely walk from their paddock (where the pool is) to the yard as they please during the day while we are home.

Another change!  We’ve fenced in the larger area outside their completely enclosed paddock. This larger area is full of grass and weeds where they can enjoy foraging during the day when we’re home and the cat is in the house.  The fence has an electric wire near the bottom, and another at the top to keep predators out, also to keep the horses from leaning over to eat grass and ruin the fence.

At first the ducks were afraid to be out there, but today is their second day out so herding them out was much easier.  I took their food out there first thing this morning when they were hungry.  (Follow the food…)  They are taking to the foraging idea quite well and seem to enjoy nibbling on the grass.  Everywhere they go, they still go as a pack.  Ten ducks all together with one large white one taller than the rest is pretty darn cute.

More changes.  We’ve switched from the small pool to a larger, deeper one.  Tim put a drain in this one so it will be easier to empty & clean.  Nice.  Unfortunately, it’s downhill from the garden, so it will be difficult to get that nice, duck-poopy water into the garden, but perhaps we’ll figure something out.

10 ducks in the small pool were getting pretty crowded!

At first the ducks were afraid of the new pool and wouldn’t go near it.  I put the nice ramp up, but they haven’t quite figured that out yet.  Sometimes I put some chopped greens on the ramp, and they’ll walk up halfway eating the greens, but not yet into the pool.  Sometimes they’ll get onto the ramp to get out of the pool (there’s a brick step inside the pool leading to the ramp), but they jump off before reaching the bottom.  One of them finally walked down it yesterday, and I got a snapshot.  Perhaps they do it when I’m not looking!  Generally they manage to get from the first (lower) step into the pool, but little by little I’ve seen a couple of them step up to the second step, then into the pool (smart ducks).  We’ll leave the ramp there and see if they get the hang of it.

One comes down the ramp!

They like the bigger pool.  They’ve figured out that they can dive under, swim across, then come up again, and sometimes do summersaults in the water.  It’s a joy to watch them in the pool.  It’s funny, but sometimes some of them seem to prefer drinking up the muddy water beside the pool rather than get in, while the others are in for a swim.  Oh well, to each his own!