Yes – I only named 2 ducks.  Mr. Keating died sometime in October, and our darling Macaroni was killed by a raccoon in November.  We were crushed.  Owning livestock is a learning experience, and we still feel the ghosts of our daily rhythms.  Sometimes in the morning I think Oh crap we forgot to let the ducks out, or at night I realize with a start that they need to be put away. Or when I open the front door it feels strange not to hear raucous quacking.  It’s nice not having the responsibility, but I really look forward to having ducks again.

And now we’re back to chicken eggs.  Chicken eggs are wussy.  They’re small (even the jumbo ones).  The shells seem unduly thin and the yolk is watery & flimsy.  It’s the difference between Schwarzenegger and the proverbial 98 pound weekling.  We gave one of our neighbors some eggs in summer as thanks for helping us out and a few days later the best he could say was I can stomach ‘em with measurable distaste.  It took some self-control not to tell him what a wuss he was.  Every time he rides by on his Harley I always think that he’s not as bad-ass as he looks

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.

The most important aspect of duck herding is getting the speed right. M (age 5) does a good job in this video of getting it pretty much right. If you are too fast, they can panic, stumble, or run right past whatever door or area you are trying to get them into. If you are too slow, they realize that you are not serious and kind of wander away, stop walking, or separate the flock. If one of them gets separated from the rest of the flock, all hell tends to ensue. The poor one that is left on its’ own gets anxious and doesn’t know where to go, and the rest of the flock tries to break through the fence to get to the lone duck. Although cute, these animals are not too smart. If they are around a corner of fence, they just don’t know how to figure out how to walk around to get to a door. They require you to guide them there. I suppose they would eventually find it, but it can take a while and be a matter of trial and error.

Probably the second most important aspect of duck herding is keeping your hands out to the sides, like an airplane. Those ducks have great peripheral vision, and they use the sight of your hands behind them to tell them where to go. I’ve read about various cultures that use long sticks held parallel to the ground to do the same thing, but the arms work fine for me with my small flock.I’ve also experimented with using the words, “go home,” when I want the ducks to go back to their house, but I’m not convinced that they’ve learned English jet. I wonder – if I spoke in Jivvanese (10 points to the first reader who gets the reference) would the ducks learn faster?

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.

One of the biggest changes for me (and Arp, on the unlucky days that I send him our to harvest eggs) is that we often have to lug buckets of water from inside and bring it out to the ducks in the morning. Arp claims to me that he actually doesn’t mind carrying the water out, but I detest it myself. The reason we are now doing this is that the garden hose freezes when the temps go down.

Another affect of the freezing temperatures is that the ducks sometimes have to go without swimming for days at a time. That’s because their swimming pool often freezes, preventing swimming. If it’s been just a slightly cold night and there is a thin layer of ice on the pool, I just break it up and they are good to go. But if the weather forecast shows multiple days of cold weather, I just dump out their pool for a few days. I think they miss swimming during those cold times, because they jump in their pool with pure joy on the next warm day!

Here’s a picture of the ducks’ house when I went out to collect eggs this morning:

The aviary netting is holding up very well, even with a bit of a snow load. I did get pretty good quality aviary netting, though. It is actually made so that snow will mostly fall through it, and it can take quite a bit of weight before it will break.

Before the winter began, I was actually quite worried about how the snow would affect the ducks. How would they react to having a snowy yard? Would their feet freeze? I am happy to report that they don’t seem to mind the snow at all, and there has been no frostbite thus far.

Even though they always have food and water in their pen, they actually choose to eat the snow frequently. I’m not sure why, but they seem to like it.

When the snow covers the ground in their pen area, I make sure to both shovel snow and sprinkle wood-chips on some of the yard. They are pretty smart – although they will walk around on the snow for a time, they always end up staying on the wood-chips and laying down there. I think this has helped prevent frostbite so far.

Since the winter has begun, I have noticed that the ducks are going through more food than before. This was expected, as the ducks are using up more calories in staying warm in the cold. But on all but the coldest days, they seem perfectly happy out there in the cold, which makes me feel good. I have also noticed that their eggs are a bit smaller than they were in the summer and fall, but still pretty large. They are also producing eggs almost every day, but I am also supplementing their light right now. I give them enough extra light to equal 14 hours per day. Just enough to keep them producing, but not enough to stress them out and hurt their health. So far, so good.

I’m going to miss these quackers when we move to Costa Rica, that’s for sure. I actually have quite a soft spot in my heart for them – especially for Macaroni and Moonbeam (the sort-of Runner ducks).

If you could only see their tushy-wagging waddle as they run off…!

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?”

It tasted exactly the same as the others.