4 out of 5 ducks…

Unbelievable!

It seems that the first batch of runner ducks I hatched, 4 out of the 5 are male. 

So 1 female. Hopefully a few more females in the 7 that hatched about 6 weeks after them. Hard to tell yet…

The males and females look identical when young, and even when mature there are only small differences. The males tend to get more green, the females have a deeper quackier quack and the most distinctive, the males get a little curl on their tail - but even that is pretty small…

Bye bye Olga and Elvis

 I really liked the muscovy ducks, but we seemed to have duds and they kept failing to hatch or raise the ducklings. So as we have a rule of ‘no slackers on the farm’ they had to go…

We are trying runner ducks now. Of the first 5 I hatched I think 4 are boys which is not the ratio you want!

Slow roast as not a young tender duck any more

Also duck sandwich

Duck curry

along with duck soup and various other duck based meals…

Might be get more ducks?

A couple of weeks ago, we put a few runner duck eggs under Olga, but she seems too heavy for them and they have been breaking, looks like none will make it to hatch unfortunately. So we got some more, and now a chicken is sitting on some with a few in the incubator too.

We’ve never tried incubating duck eggs before and it is meant to be more difficult than chickens. Hopefully a few will make it at least. Runner ducks are an egg breed but we hope the spare males will be a nice size for two!

The chicken decided to go broody in the box where most of the chickens want to lay. Historically this has caused issues when we want them to brood the eggs as they get pushed off them and some get pushed out the nest and broken and bad things like that. They also don’t take well to being moved we have found, so I have put a cage round her with food and water and moved the nest box along for the others. She has 8 eggs in there, go chicken!

All looks a bit heath robinson, but hopefully it will work for them all!

There are 8 in the incubator too. I’m hand turning for the first 10 days as I have read it has better results (the eggs move continually when automatically turned, and sporadically for hand turned may be the difference - or it may be myth!)

Snowy Animals

 It snowed a few days ago. Fortunately we had just got hay for the cows and horses so everyone has a full belly or warming hay. The sheep even accepted a little, generally if they have any grass at all they reject hay...

It’s melting off a lot now, but much colder than it has been here for years. The last two winters were very warm and even the few before that, though we had snow it didn’t freeze so hard.

The ducks don’t seem to mind the cold and go swimming as soon as I break the ice on their water. Nutters!

The chickens aren’t too bothered either. Apparently if it gets really really cold they can get frost bite on their combs, but not seen any sign of that

Buttercup always used to feel the cold, but the remaining ones don’t so much

The horses have their run in and plenty of hay as well as wooly winter coats

The sheep have plenty of wool, they only accept hay when they can’t get at the grass at all.

Chicken Massacre

Some horrible beast (fox? pine marten?) got in to the chickens and killed 17 chickens and 2 ducks. It left behind 9 chicken corpses, some without heads. The rest and the ducks disappeared without trace.

They were mostly ones we raised this year (some were to be sold and some eaten by us) but we also lost the cockerel and 3 of the laying hens. All the remaining 7 are female, but none are now laying, 4 of them are young and haven’t started yet, and the 3 that were laying are too traumatised. The 1 remaining female duck has also stopped laying. We are going to need to buy eggs! 

It is very sad, and such a terrible waste, whatever it was didn’t even eat that many of them 😢

The electric fence had blown over in the night in the storms and the shock power was very low which is presumably how it happened. We have cranked the power up (by depowering some other fences) and not (yet) had a repeat visit. Fingers crossed...

These are the survivors (plus another ginger one). Not quite decided what to do yet, but we need a new cockerel. May buy one or buy some eggs to hatch in the Spring.

Duck for dinner

Sad to see the ducklings go as they are funny and cute, but we cannot keep them all. 

Nice meal with pancetta and vin sauvage to start

Duck with roast potato and kale

Apple crumble

Ducklings are getting big

The ducklings are 5 weeks old now. They grow fast!

Ducklings first swim

The first few days of ducklings (or chicks) is stressful as they are tiny and quite fragile.

I have a rock in the pond so anyone who falls in can get out. I also check several times a day to make sure no duckling is stuck somewhere it can’t get back to the warmth of mum. She is an attentive mum, but not very useful at actually knowing what to do when one is stuck.

I cleaned the pond only this morning but they immediately poo in it then enjoy drinking the poo water. Nice!

Ducklings!

Olga hatched 5 duckings! Muscovy’s are meant to be great at hatching loads of eggs, but ours don’t seem to be! But in fact 4 or 5 is a good number at once as their enclosure isn’t huge.

Naughty Ducks!

Today I was planning on doing quite a lot of naff all, and maybe something indoors like finishing some cushions. That went out the window when I went out to give hay to the horses and found the ducks wandering free. Not a very safe place for them to be with Miss Snarfles and the fox about. A tree fell on their fence a few days ago and I was planning on moving them, but hoped it would hold until the rain stopped. Clearly not! Cue a morning spent in the driving rain, snow and hail to get a new bit of fence up. But still, it was something that had to be done, and they are much safer now in a good electric enclosure.

We rescued a couple of chickens from a chicken farm (in fact someone else rescued a 1000 of them and we gave these two a home), they are not impressed with conditions, they keep begging me to return them to their nice warm battery shed! I have been feeding them in the chicken house as the poor things don’t have very many feathers.

Duck!

This is one of the ducklings that came with Olga and Elvis. She is grown up now and has started laying (maybe a month ago) but not showing any signs of sitting on her eggs. A chicken is sitting on them at the moment and giving it a go. Her mum is sitting on eggs but the chickens keep shifting her so not sure how it will work out, I can't persuade her to do it somewhere else. Annoying!

Ducklings

Olga hatched 3 ducklings, sadly one dies almost straight away. Not sure why more of the eggs didn't hatch, she seemed to sit quite intermittently for a while then laid a few more eggs and I presume those were the ones that hatched as the others started and then got cold when she stopped sitting. 

I'm not strangling them honest!

Duck harvest time

The 6 'ducklings' (1 died when they were a few months old as the male kept chasing it and it got stuck in the electric fence) are about 14 weeks old now and they were eating LOADS between them so I harvested 4 of them so we could eat instead. We have kept two females, but may sell one or both depending how we get on.

The males plucked a lot more easily than the females, I think because their feathers were more developed. They were also quite a bit bigger.

The smallest weighed 1.8 kg all prepared and the largest 2.5 kg

Mrs Duck is sitting on some more eggs so perhaps we will have some new duckings in a months time.

Duck Egg!

Mr Duck looking very fine

 Our first duck egg (bottom left) and two chicken eggs

Yummy!

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

These are our new muscovy ducks. They don't quack! The male hisses and the female kind of chirps (bit like a guinea pig). They are my (not) birthday present come a bit early.

We were a bit worried that the chickens might attach the ducklings, but after an initial set to between the drake and the cockerel everything has been peaceful.

Muscovys don't lay huge numbers of eggs each year, but we are hoping for a few as well as perhaps three batches of duckings each year - yum!