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.