GOLDEN GAITS GARDEN

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GOLDEN GAITS GARDEN BLOG

“Golden Gaits Garden” was the blog we kept from 2009 through 2017, from the time we began gardening & raising ducks in Wellington until the time High Country Living went live in 2017. This blog had been hosted on “Blogger”, but since we have left all association with Google, these pages have been integrated with High Country Living. Some of the photos & videos were lost in the transfer, but most have been found and re-entered. Have fun looking through the pages of “Golden Gaits Garden” when we first learning to garden & raise our first ducks.

GOLDEN GAITS GARDEN BLOG POST ARCHIVES

Daisy, Ruby, Apple, Sweedie, Mocha

DUCKS WE’VE RAISED

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DUCKS WE'VE RAISED

We have been raising ducks since the summer of 2011. As of Summer 2024, we are now keeping our 5th flock of ducks: five ducks, five different breeds. These ducks are now one year old.

CURRENT FLOCK OF FIVE

2023-Present: Our current flock of five different ducklings, five different breeds were hatched August 2023. They are a wacky & fun bunch, and most of the time very calm.

FIVE DUCKS :: FIVE BREEDS

2019-2023: Our current flock of five different ducklings, five different breeds were hatched August 1 & 8, 2019. They were a good flock, nice & calm, good layers.

SIX DUCKS - FIVE BREEDS

2016-2019: These 5 breeds were: Chocolate Runner, Fawn & White Runner, Cayuga, White Layer, and 2 Welsh Harlequins.

GOLDEN CASCADES

2015-2016: Our second flock of ducks, raised here in Guffey, were GOLDEN CASCADES,. This link takes you to our former blog. Be sure to see the article "Spot Flies" about the duck who liked to fly off our deck.

WELSH HARLEQUIN + PEKIN

2011-2014: Our first flock of ducks were WELSH HARLEQUIN. Eventually we added two adult PEKIN ducks. We learned a lot about raising ducks from this first bunch. By clicking the photo or title link, you will go to a blog we kept at our former location, where we raised these ducks.

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LIGHTING FOR EGG PRODUCTION

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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.

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CURRENT FLOCK

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FIVE DUCKS :: FIVE BREEDS

Our 2019 flock was purchased as ducklings August of that year. They  turned out to be an enjoyable group. Friendly, not too noisy and generally calm. These ducks have been a great group and good layers.

January 2023 Update: We now have just two ducks: Apple & Ruby. One of the ducks died, later when the price of organic feed kept increasing, we decided to keep just the two calmest of the ducks. We decided to give the non-organic feed and grow more food for their diet in addition to harvesting duckweed from our nearby stream. We may get new ducklings in the spring now that the price of eggs is so high!

APPLE

Apple is our Silver Appleyard. She's the largest and by far the calmest, sweetest duck we've ever had. When she was a baby she had an odd white spot at the top of her left eye. It's better, but still a bit squinty. She also limped a bit at first, but that healed up quickly. She frequently gets so excited she flies a couple of feet.

RUBY

Ruby, the Rouen, is one of the friendliest, next to Apple. She has beautiful blackish-brown feathers with turquoise-blue on the wing. She was our "extra", which we got after one of the first ducklings we had gotten died. We couldn't have just one replacement shipped, so added Ruby as a companion duckling. We're glad we did!

SWEEDIE

Our Black Swedish, Sweedie, has silky black feathers with green, purple & blue tints in the sunshine. Her white breast is a beautiful marking. I'd give her an average calmness rating in comparison to all of our ducks.

MOCHA

Mocha is our Golden 300 Hybrid Layer. She is the smallest of all these ducks and has beautiful brown-mocha colored feathers. Looks kind of coffee-colored. She blends in with the flock and is generally quiet.

DAISY

Daisy, our White Layer, turned out to be a quite a character. She was a beautiful white duck. 4/24/21 Unfortunately Daisy had acted quite sick for about 3 weeks, stopped eating, and died.

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SIX-PACK OF DUCKS

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the six-pack :: 2016-2019

Our “Six-Pack” of ducklings arrived in early August 2016. Many mail-order companies require a minimum of ten ducklings, but we didn’t want that many. We wanted only layers and no extra drakes we would have to butcher. We found that Metzer Farms will send a smaller order of ducklings (for an extra charge we were willing to pay).

These six were a beautiful selection of ducks. Although we rarely knew which ducks were producing which eggs, we usually had 4-6 eggs per day during the first two lay seasons. One duck never molted the first year and laid continuously through the fall. Coco, our Chocolate Runner, laid green eggs, so we always knew which one was hers. Blackie, the Cayuga, laid black eggs at the beginning of the season, but within a week they became white like all the others. The egg production the first two years was as expected, and we generally enjoyed having these ducks.

WHITEY :: WHITE LAYER

Whitey was perhaps our best duck. I believe she may have been the duck that never molted the first year, although I am unsure. She was generally calm and I could give her a pet when she came to the food trough.

BLACKIE :: CAYUGA

Blackie was a beautiful black duck with greenish highlights in the sunshine. She laid black eggs at the beginning of each season, which later turned to white. I had a hunch she was not one of our best layers, but couldn’t say for sure. She was a noisy duck and seemed to be the ring-leader of the others, inciting more quacking from everyone else. After she was culled they all seemed a bit calmer, for a while anyway.

Blackie’s 1st 6 eggs of the season

HARLEY & QUINN :: WELSH HARLEQUIN DUCKS

I had a hard time telling these apart, but one had a slightly darker head than the other. I believe they were consistent layers until the last year. One of them (Quinn) seemed to stop laying eggs early in the last season. We separated her for a while to be sure, and culled her from the flock. I just didn’t want to be feeding 5 ducks only to get 3 eggs. Late in the last season we were only getting 2 eggs out of the four remaining ducks and determined that Harley was either egg-bound or having some respiratory difficulty. She constantly heaved and never laid 

another egg. After soaking her in warm water and massaging her vent with oil, it seemed there was no egg within. We put her out of her misery.

FAWN :: FAWN & WHITE RUNNER

Fawn was a fun girl who also allowed me to pet her at mealtime. She had the most endearing personality. I enjoyed watching both runners run—very cute. During most of their last season, she seemed to only lay soft-shell eggs, and they came rarely. She would often lay later in the day, finding a nest spot somewhere outside of the paddock. It was like an Easter egg hunt to find her soft eggs. We retired her near the end of the last season, after we determined for sure she was only laying soft shells.

COCO :: CHOCOLATE RUNNER

As mentioned elsewhere, Coco became a noisy, crabby duck in the end. Prior to that, she was a good layer, and her green eggs always allowed us to know which were hers. The first couple of years she had an even temperament and was a fun duck to watch, running along with Fawn.

GOLDEN GAITS GARDEN POSTS

When we first got the Six-Pack ducklings we were still recording events on our old blogs, “Golden Gaits Garden” and “Mountain Gaitway.” Below are posts from those blogs, which may be redundant, but show our enthusiasm for these new ducklings.

NEW DUCKLINGS COMING

July 31, 2016 No Comments

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

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BIG DUCKS, LITTLE DUCKS

August 21, 2016 No Comments

The baby ducks have been moved out to the Duckagon with the big ducks. They are separated from the big ducks for a bit until they get a little bigger. After putting them into the Duckagon, Laurie had to “encourage” them to come out and explore. The big ducks and

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“SIX-PACK” GROWS UP

October 5, 2016 No Comments

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

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WINTER DUCKS

January 16, 2017 No Comments

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.

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THE 2016 SIX-PACK HAS RETIRED

August 22, 2019 No Comments

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

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Ducks

DUCKS

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DUCKS AT THE RANCH

(RAISING DUCKS FOR EGGS)

A couple of years after starting our garden in Wellington, we decided it might be time to add some chickens, for eggs and perhaps for their meat. As we began researching chickens we ran across some references to ducks in books and on websites. We began to think that ducks might be a good choice for us. There are several reasons we chose ducks:

  • Ducks are generally healthier than chickens. Ducklings don’t catch the diseases chicks frequently do (such as coccidiosis), and therefore don’t require medicated feed, which is often found in chicken feed.
  • Ducks have a longer life span than chickens.
  • Ducks not only lay eggs for more years, they lay more eggs per year. During the lay season they lay nearly one egg per day.
  • Ducks lay their eggs quietly, early in the morning.
  • Duck eggs are superior, especially for baked goods.
  • Ducks do not scratch and destroy the ground, they walk on top. They don’t destroy the garden as much.
  • Ducks are wonderful bug-catchers. They catch mice, too!
  • Ducks are more heat-tolerant.
  • Ducks are more cold-hardy. (After all, what do they make jackets out of???)
  • Ducks are cuter. Of course, that’s a matter of opinion. 

All things considered, the verdict for us was DUCKS. Since then, we’ve raised five different batches of ducklings. First, Welsh Harlequins, at our previous home in Wellington, 2011. Second, Golden Cascades, here in Guffey, 2015. Third, also in the high country in 2016 a “six-pack” consisting of two Welsh Harlequins and one each of: White Layer, Cayuga, Fawn & White Runner, and Chocolate Runner. 2019 we started with 1 each: White Layer, Golden 300 Hybrid, Black Swedish, Rouen, & Silver Appleyard. As of January 2023 we have reduced the flock to just two: “Apple”, our Silver Appleyard; and “Ruby” our Rouen. One of the five died, and later we reduced the flock due to the rising cost of organic feed. Please read about ALL THE DUCKS WE’VE RAISED.

When we were building the house and had no railing on the deck, one of our ducks flew off the deck! Twice! She went back up and did it again just so I’d be ready to take a photo.

One Duck Flew off the Deck
Spot, Just Before Takeoff
Bellyflop Landing
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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.

Golden Cascades

DOWN TO 5 DUCKS

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Golden Cascades, 17 Weeks Old, 4 Hens, 1 Drake

Now we’ve got the final count. After discovering that we had two drakes (rather than just one, as planned) we have now donated one of the drakes to a nearby Wolf Sanctuary.  I’m sure the wolves there appreciate the donation. The photo above shows the ducks we plan to keep indefinitely. Hopefully, the drake will allow us to have a few baby ducklings in the spring.

The last batch of ducks we had remained unnamed, other than the colored bands they had around their ankles (pink, green, blue, etc.)  This time they look different enough that I’m planning to go ahead and name them. The names are still up in the air a bit, but for now they are as follows:

Wily – This is the drake that fooled us into believing he was a she, and now his life has been spared. Other than the blue-gray bill, I believe his plumage is closer to the preferred colors for this breed. (Per Dave Holderread.) Also, he has better camouflage than the other drake had, which is my preference.

Next, we have Bess, until I think of a better name. I thought about “Brownie” because she’s quite brown…I could change my mind.

Here is Ellie May. I just thought it was a cute name, and this duck has no outstanding characteristics.

Meet Gertrude. I just thought a duck should be named Gertrude.

This is either Spot, or Splash, or Dory.  One of these days I will decide. Spot would be because when she was little she had a spot on her right foot. Now she has a couple of black spots on her beak. Splash would be because she’s the first one in the pool many a time, and runs there first thing in the morning, before going to the food dish.  Because she likes the water, Tim thought of Dory, after the fish in Finding Nemo.  So, Dory would be cute….but which name will stick? Any ideas?