We’ve always thought that our ducks are just adorable. Unlike chickens, they have beautiful eyes, expressive faces and are just cute & cuddly. Chickens, on the other hand, have hard, soulless eyes & unexpressive faces. When Quint was talking about ‘black, lifeless eyes’ in Jaws, he might as well have been talking about chickens.
We found proof that ducks are cuter than chickens in our library in the form of a histrionic book on avian flu titled The Monster at Our Door. What’s on the cover? (below left) A chicken. An evil-looking, bad-ass, switchblade-wielding willkillyouinyoursleepandeatyourchildren chicken. Look at those eyes. And that beak that will poke your eyes out at the slightest provocation. That is the face of avian flu, or unspeakable TERROR.
Now to the right is the cover with our adorable ducks replacing the killer chicken. They’re just too damn cute to be threatening. Their faces are soft & expressive, and the worst those beaks could do is scoop some goo out of the corner of your eyes. There is no way in hell that you could sell fear & terror with the face of a duck.
There you have it - proof positive that ducks are cuter than chickens.
Since this is duckling season, I thought I’d put up a video demonstrating how to herd ducks. Before I got our ducks, that was one of my biggest worries. After all, I live in suburbia. I had visions of quacking, flapping ducks going everywhere except into their pen, including the neighbors’ yards. Luckily, duck herding turned out to be a breeze. M was very nice about demonstrating on video. Read more »
Now that we are truly in the midst of a cold New York winter, some things have changed for my little ducky children! No more warm days spent basking in the sun…no more frolicking under the spray of a garden hose…and no more nibbling on fresh dandelion greens from the yard. And I’ve had to change some of my duck care routine, too. Read more »
Before the day the black egg came to us, we’d been getting only 3 eggs per day, all white, from our 4 ducks. This was all as expected. Both our khaki campbells and our runner ducks were supposed to give us white eggs. Other breeds of duck can produce other colors - brown or even blue/green. But not ours. Our heavy producing breeds are supposed to produce white.
As excited as I was about our egg production so far, I have to admit that I was just a tiny bit annoyed that we hadn’t gotten to the 4 eggs per day level yet. I knew that one duck was slacking off, almost pushing me to the point of buying supermarket eggs on one occasion. Really, I’d planned for close to 5 eggs per day when I started this enterprise by buying 5 ducklings, but our loss of Megatooth early on had doomed us to a maximum of 4 eggs per day. So we learned what I’m sure must be a common lesson among new poultry owners - get an extra bird or two because you never know when you’ll lose one.
With all this information stored in my brain, you can imagine my surprise on the Morning of the Black Egg (I’m thinking of starting a push to have this day declared a National Holiday). When I peeked inside the duck house, I actually thought we had 3 white eggs and one rock. Or maybe a big duck poop. Good thing I fished around a little with my hands to investigate.
None of us really know what to think. Why black? Was this some sort of aesthetic statement, or maybe a reflection of the mood of the duck? (Is there such a thing as ducky Prozac?) And which of these birds made it - can you guess?
I can’t really guarantee that I know, but I have my suspicions.
And the big question seems to be - “How did it taste?”
For the last few days we’ve been feeling pretty lucky about getting one egg per day. Of course, we have 4 presumably female ducks. I’m still looking forward to the days ahead when I get 3 or 4 eggs per day. But at least this is a start. And yesterday I got my first really big one - the equivalent of an extra-large chicken egg. I’ve been really proud of the anonymous duck that made that egg for the last 24+ hours.
But up until now, I’ve only used the duck eggs to bake a cake. (The cake turned out just as expected, by the way. The same as when I used chicken eggs.) So this morning, Arp and I were excited to try frying up some duck eggs for breakfast to see what they taste like in their pure form. Read more »
28 days ago, we bought our plane tickets to Costa Rica. We will be moving in 2 months and 26 days. We need to get off our butts, get rid of crap and pack, pack, pack!
We’ve always thought that our ducks are just adorable. Unlike chickens, they have beautiful eyes, expressive faces and are just cute & cuddly. Chickens, on the other hand, have hard, soulless eyes & unexpressive faces. When Quint was talking about ‘black, lifeless eyes’ in Jaws, he might as well have been talking about chickens.
Now to the right is the cover with our adorable ducks replacing the killer chicken. They’re just too damn cute to be threatening. Their faces are soft & expressive, and the worst those beaks could do is scoop some goo out of the corner of your eyes. There is no way in hell that you could sell fear & terror with the face of a duck. 
