Monday, July 18, 2011

The Ugly Duckling

Photo: Waggles and Taggles (taken by Canon 50d)

The title means absolutely nothing. Only that we have ducks. You can see our farm set up here:


Video: Early farm setup Part 1 of 4 (taken by cell phone). You Tube Video.

Of course that is only part one of the videos. Here are the others.
I dont want to embed them, because it slows down the page uploading.
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

We have 2 ducks. They are dark Kahki Cambells. They are excellent egg producers, but not the most people friendly. They tolerate us more than really enjoying our company when we visit. Their names are Waggles and Taggles. Waggles was named due to the waggle of the ducks' tails and Taggles was named because she followed Waggles around.


Now ducks are the opposite of our chickens. Like people, female ducks are the loudest (Just kidding people, my wife is reading this as well and she is awesome... especially her sense of humor.) But you cant exactly produce with male ducks, so we deal with it.


When they were tiny babies, we could not tell. As they were growing, we noticed that one was taller than the other. It had a pump at the end of its beak. We didn't thing much of this yet. As they got older, the voice (or quack) of one changed into a quack (Taggles the short one), but the other kept the shrill chirp. We figured, "In it's own time, it will change," but we were growing more curious about the sexes of them.


The ducks grew larger and larger. It wasnt until about 15 to 18 weeks that the head of the big one changed to a dark green color, and it started growing the curved tail feathers that the drakes grow.


Of course we know now that it is male, but we can do nothing with it. Ducks are companion birds, so we cant get rid of Clyde and leave Bonnie all by her self. Our choice now is to go ahead and breed them, get more ducks, and then keep the breeding pair separate. This could change. That is what you get when you actually follow people that don't know it all and are learning.

Hasta Luego Urbanites!

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