Walking over to get the hose (green) got a bit more interesting when I saw a 3 footish red hose in the yard.
Wait….I don’t have a 3 foot hose….
Oh. Rat snake! I like these guys around too, could use a few more. This one didn’t move until I poked it’s tail, then went about 6 feet away and decided to pretend to be a vicious snake!
After a few minutes it headed off to hopefully reduce the rat population and avoid getting stepped on. Bye buddy!
This is a cat who knows how important a daily nap is. He sleeps so hard you can pile objects on him and he barely reacts…if at all!
He makes a great place to put the remote so I can find it later….
Went to let the buff ducks group outing the morning and wait…why am I eye level with a duck?!?!
So it seems this little girl decided she doesn’t want to be down with every one else and has decided she would spend the night on top of the spare carrier and wind break making bags!
Well…can’t blame her, although I imagine it gets windy up there sometimes. Score one for the smart duck!
Extra picture from when I told her to get down…”down there?!?!” 🙂
I had to pull a window screen off the house after accidentally hitting it with a paint roller loaded with paint. I wanted to wash the paint off the screen before it set. Below is the side that faces out (not against the house) and what I’m used to seeing… Weathered wood with the grain standing out several millimeters from the rest.
I rinsed most of the paint off that side and went to flip the frame over and WOW! This is the same piece of wood?!?!?!? If I wasn’t holding it in my hand I wouldn’t believe it! The side out of the weather and not facing the sun is absolutely stunning. Smooth, nice grain, gorgeous coloration, did I mention smooth?? I would’ve loved to have seen the house when it was brand spanking new if this is even a fraction of what it used to look like…
It occurred to me as I was bagging up crushed eggshells that if someone were to come to the door right now I’d have to attempt to explain the scene.
Scale that measures in grams…a stack of baggies…piles of white (ish) powder…and me in the middle watching a cartoon. Ok, it’s Lilo and Stitch, I’ll confess!
Just wait until I get to my big bag of crushed sage leaves! But the only thing knocking on the door is a lizard catching bugs…whew! At least, I think so?
They mentioned they heard ducks are better on grass than chickens (hence the comments about grass). Most of the thread was pro chicken, despite them asking specifically advice on raising ducks. Complaints about the ducks being messy with water, the poop being nastier than other animals, etc. My response (paragraphs added later):
Yes, ducks will leave grass standing whereas chickens scratch it up and destroy it. If ducks are in too small of an area, they will flatten it because they have flipper feet not because of behaviour.
They love water (ducks….of course!) and will make a mess. They’re poop is the same as any other bird, just more watery. I find I never step in duck poop after they’ve been in the yard, vs chickens that like to leave me piles and the dogs snacks. They actually can live without a pool (I have a bachelor pen that I use feed buckets for water and they’re fine) but they are a trip to watch. Yes, the pool will get dirty. The water is GREAT for watering gardens! I put a tree that likes a lot of water and nutrients on the other side of fence and dump my water there, it’s very happy. I use kiddie pools and siphon the water down until I can dump it. If you have sand around the pool, don’t wait too long between changes or it’ll have a lot in the bottom. What I’d love to have one day is a gravel bed with the pool up on pallets -gravel so they can’t dabble around the edges and then wash their dirty faces and repeat, up on pallets to stop them standing at the edge all day playing-in or out!
Mine are smart as the chickens if not smarter and they don’t attack humans/other animals/each other. Only nibbles I’ve had is when moving a broody hen or reaching under her to check eggs, just candled 40 eggs yesterday and simply picked the cranky one up and set her next to me. Try that with a 8 lb chicken with a sharp beak lol.
As far as heating the duck coop, you don’t need to worry about keeping them warm due to feathers, but make sure they have DRY bedding at night so it doesn’t freeze to them. I do not give them water or food in the night time pen , keeps it much cleaner.
Feedwise, My adults get the same layer pellets as the chickens, but the babies need supplimental niacin if you feed NON medicated crumbles. Don’t give them medicated ones! I use brewer’s years or niacin powder depending on what I have on hand until they are 3 months old…some only do it for 8 weeks. They get leg issues without it.
Breedwise, runners lay really well but mine are flighty and scatter. I like rouens and now buff , although 1/3 of my buffs are now broody so I get less eggs. Pekin ducks are loud and the messiest poop wise of any breed I’ve had. Muscovies are quiet but ugly and fly to your neighbors (related to geese). Khaki campell are good layers and friendly.
Pen wise, my nighttime pen is very secure (racoon tried its best to get in last night as a matter of fact but no go). I have a covered daytime pen since we have hawks and owls available too :).
The only reason I still have chickens is for their scratching capabilities as they are great for tilling the soil or turning over manure. They also make good garbage disposals, but now that I have pigs they’ve lost some of that.
Most of the problems with ducks is when people keep them in too small of an area and don’t make arrangements for water disposal. They are not good when caged animals unlike chickens and need room.
I read in a book that geese grew quickly….but every book I’ve read says that about every animal. I didn’t think anything of it, especially since they don’t eat a ton of food compared to the ducks.
Well…I’m officially amazed. Look at them! Just look! They don’t even have feathers but are already double, if not more, their size! I’m not going to be able to use this milk crate for very long to carry them…
Like the ducks, they look hilarious after dousing themselves in water. The temperature is in the 90s so I am not concerned about them getting chilled.
When I went to pull down carriers to clean for a rabbit show, something flew past my face!
Hoping it wasn’t a rat…I looked a little closer and found this:
Unfortunately I needed the carriers and couldn’t just put them back so I rebuilt a stack on top of the next and hoped mamma bird would find it satisfactory….
She did come back for a few days and was using the new nest. About a week later I saw two of the eggs outside the nest and no mamma bird in site…she ended up abandoning the nest , or she might’ve gotten hurt somewhere and couldn’t come back. I was looking forward to see the babies too!
Here’s a quick version with a few explanations of a list I made to remind myself of what I needed to bring to my local rabbit show:
Things to do before the show:
At the show:
After the show:
Well, momma duck has done a good job and her half a dozen babies are ready to go! They (and mom) escaped their separation pen yesterday while I was rescuing a stuck newborn duckling from the wire so I left them with the herd to see how they’d do. Mom decided she was done with them after about 10 minutes and left them on their own. I went back about 2 hours later and could only find 4 out of 6…after searching the entire pen I noticed one of the water tubs was flat on the ground instead of leaning against the pen.
I know not to leave anything leaning when there’s animals small enough to get trapped under, but I was distracted by newborns… I went over and lifted the tub and sure enough, 2 very disgruntled ducklings went zooming out from under it.
I decided to see if they could spend the night with the big ducks, but after listening to their frantic crying changed my mind and herded them back into the separation pen. Despite 2 weeks of seeing everyone else through wire, they just weren’t fitting in. I refastened the wire separator and decided it was time for them to find new homes. I’m gonna miss them!
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