Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Sir Francis Drake

I figured it would be a good time for an honorary post, for an honorary duck, Sir Francis Drake.

Friday, September 30, 2011

Egg time!

I haven't tried any of the eggs, but there have been reports from up north that some of the chickens, and Sir Francis Drake, have started to lay eggs. Cluck you and Timbuktu have happily started laying them in a planter box near the tiny house (i.e. not in their designated laying box in the chicken coop). The eggs are blue.

Sir Francis must have laid the other egg, because he* is the only girl duck.

Perhaps in retrospect 5 ducks was a bit excessive. They really don't do very much, and they quack all night. One would think that ducks would settle down and sleep at night, but this is not the case. They will quack indignantly for a while, swim some (yes, even at 2 in the morning), and then continue their incessant quackery for the rest of the night (and day). Sir Francis is the leader of the little flock and he is by far the loudest. Apparently male ducks are quieter, while female ducks make the quintessential 'quack' noise. Unfortunately Sir Francis, with his egg laying ability is the only one of the ducks that has any utility so we can't just get rid of him. (Especially not after creating the 'what an honorary duck' song in his honor).

I haven't been spending a huge amount of time up North recently, but the few nights I've been up there I have a hard time sleeping because of all the racket these ducks make. I had a dream one night when I was up there where I made a nice duck coop on the complete opposite side of the field away from where we slept. Jay reports having what I would call a nightmare, where a critter got into the duck coop and killed the ducks, but left Sir Francis alive to quack another day.

Needless to say our few nights of annoyance are nothing compared to my poor father who has to sleep there every night. Given that he has access to a BB gun, I'm surprised we have not already had a duck dinner.

The chickens are great. Spencer goes out and clucks to them in the mornings before he leaves for school and gives them scraps. They've started to come running to him when he comes out. They sleep very quietly and are generally just fun to watch. The only potential pit fall with the chickens is that I've heard reports, starting about the time of the egg laying reports, that one of them is making cockerel sounds. This probably would be the last straw in terms of the allowable amount of poultry noise, so if a duck is to be spared we may need to have a free range chicken dinner instead.

*I have a hard time referring to Sir Francis as a she, but am aware of the inaccuracy of calling it a he.

The picture is of a store bought egg, 4 of our chicken eggs, and a duck egg.

Friday, May 20, 2011

Then And now

Tweedle Dee
(04/25/11) vs. (05/20/11)


Tweedle Dum

(04/25/11) vs. (05/20/11)

A quack free week



Last weekend (05/14/11) we decided that we needed to ditch the ducks with my dad. They were only 3 weeks old, but they were already too big to spend all their time in a dog crate/IKEA drawer. Also, they were just flat out too messy/smelly for such a small space.

Because they are still young, my dad and siblings fashioned a multi-dog crate system to help ease them into being outside. Last night (05/19/11) was their first night outside, and when he checked on them at midnight Sir Francis Drake was swimming around.

The light in the first photo was intended to give them a source of heat at night, but unfortunately Maddy was in charge of buying a new light bulb after the old one burned out and she purchased a CFL. In her defense, it is almost impossible to buy a light bulb that isn't a CFL, and incandescent light bulbs were pretty much before her time.

Life for us has been much easier since they left! The chickens poop a lot, but are still far less demanding than the ducks.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Bernard Black


We've decided on a name for our black runner duck. Bernard Black in honor of the main character from Black Books.

Friends Not Food



We're trying hard to convince Thor that the new additions to our household are friends and not bite size (very fresh) treats. This seems like a difficult task because many of the main ingredients in his dog food are fowl. However, it seems as though we might be succeeding as evident by the photos.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Their Splash Time is our Trash Time



The ducks are messy. They love water and shitting so much that the minimum cage cleaning requirement is at least once a day. We like to do this at night so that we can go to bed knowing that everyone is clean, dry and taken care of. The cover of darkness also helps us get a big plastic tub of sodden pine shavings to the dumpster without raising the eyebrows of our neighbors. Of particular concern is the elderly Chinese couple downstairs who already have a distaste for us, but who I'm sure have a great taste for pekin duck.

So while we make the daily trek down to the dumpster the ducks get a quarter filled bath tub to splash around in. The pleasure they get from the water may motivate them to dirty their space more quickly if they ever make the connection between cleaning and bath time. Luckily, as cute as they are, they are still ducks, a species which I don't believe has the hope of grasping that sort of logic


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Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Meet the players

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Monday, May 2, 2011

3 ducklings 4 chicks

I mean four ducklings....No wait, five. And four chicks? Please, how about six.

Needless to say, the search for a couple of laying chickens has devolved fairly quickly into me having 11 cheeping, eating, shitting avian friends in my one bedroom apartment.


It all started April 16th when my dad finally caved to my (long held) desire to have chickens back in my life. At the time my dad had honestly believed that he had just consented to some chickens, but already in my head I had added 'and two ducks'. The next weekend we were back looking around the local feed shops for some chicks (this corresponds perfectly to Easter but has nothing really to do with it).

At the second shop we decided on two araucana chicks (they lay blue/green eggs) and two black australorp chicks (who lay brown). It was also here that I picked up my first three ducklings, apparently they don't like being alone, so I got three in case one died so that there would still be a pair.

As far as ducks go, we got one runner duck, one campbell, and one cayuga. The runner ducks stand upright and prefer to run, not walk and the campbell lays almost as many eggs as a chicken. They are all straight run so I don't know which (if any) are female.

At the second shop they had some older black runner ducks which we had seen as ducklings at the first place we went. I thought they looked really handsome and wanted to go back and get one of the black runners. Jay let me. We went back to the first feed store but, annoyingly, they wouldn't let me buy just one duckling so I got two. Jay let me. So that brought the total duckling count up to 5. The fifth one happens to be a jumbo pekin duck so I think it may actually count as two.

It wasn't until the next weekend that we added the final (I hope) two chicks. We added them to the rest of the chicks without telling my dad, but he can count and declared it 'an Easter miracle'. The two new additions are buff Orpington's who are very pretty tan chickens.