Chicks and Ducklings: Mission Accomplished

Back in August, we had a couple of fun surprises. First, a mother duck hatched out eleven ducklings. Shortly thereafter, a mother hen hatched out nine chicks. Given the propensity with which baby birds get picked off --- even when being raised by the most-attentive mothers --- we decided to move both broods into a portable 4x8 garden pen. They weren't happy about sharing the space, but it was our only option. They did manage to co-exist, and both broods thrived.

The pen turned out to be a great choice, for several reasons:

• We were able to get lots of high-protein feed into these little birds. Had they been running around the barnyard, they would've been limited to forage and would not have grown nearly so large nearly so quickly. With autumn approaching fast, we're glad they're in good shape.
• They cleared out TONS of overgrown weeds from a fallow swath of the garden, that we would otherwise have had to deal with. They got all that green stuff in their diet.
• They eliminated lots of crickets, beetles, and other bugs from the garden area.
• They converted all those weeds and bugs into a wonderful layer of rich fertilizer. This portion of the garden will be exploding with growth after next Spring's planting.

Here's a good picture of what they managed to accomplish (in tandem with a second pen, home to nine layer pullets we've been raising since April):

And here's a good shot of what things looked like inside the pen:

With cooler weather and shorter days, we decided it was time to transition the birds and their mothers into the broader flocks. Plus, ducks go through an unbelievable amount of water. I was having to fill their five-gallon waterer at least once per day. (For the nine pullets in the other pen, the interval is more like once per week.) Time for them to go splash around in the swamp with their brethren.

The toughest part was getting the mother hen, and all nine chicks, into the barn last night. We'd turned them loose in the area behind the barn, hoping they'd follow the other birds inside as darkness fell. Unfortunately, they kept trying to get back into the garden; after all, that was the only "home" they remembered, and even Mother Hen had trouble convincing them there was any better place. The two oldest Yeoman Farm Children helped me catch the nine chicks and physically deposit them deep inside the barn. Once Mother Hen joined them, they settled in for the night. They were still piled up in the same nest when I came out this morning.

So far, so good. Next task is to move the Barred Rock pullets. Problem is, they're now so big they're indistinguishable from our two-plus-year-old Barred Rocks which need to be culled. I don't have the time or freezer space to cull them right now, so it's looking like I'll need to put an orange zip tie around a leg on each of the old ones.

Never a dull moment on the farm.

Duckling Update

The ducklings I posted about earlier this week continue to thrive with their mother duck, safely inside a garden pen. This definitely looks like it was the right move.

If anything tragic befalls the mother duck later this week, perhaps we can locate an about-to-deliver-kittens barn cat as an emergency surrogate. Seriously, the video at this link is amazing.

Duckling Surprise!

One of the most-fun aspects of raising free range poultry on a small farm is that the birds are truly able to behave the way God designed them. That includes foraging, swimming in the swamp, mating, making a nest, and sometimes even successfully hatching a clutch of eggs.

You never know when you'll come out early in the morning and get a surprise like this one: 

One of our Ancona ducks, leading eleven new little ducklings all over the barnyard. When I first came out, she was foraging under the apple tree. No doubt she was looking for windfall fruit and the little bugs that come with it. Soon, she and her little pack of ducklings moved on to the pear tree to do the same.

I smiled, watched them for awhile, and then put some grain down for her to eat. Interestingly, even though I walked away and gave her plenty of privacy, she had her own plans. She never touched it; instead, she led the ducklings all over the rest of the property.

Homeschooled Farm Girl and I had a discussion about the best course of action. Should we just let the mother duck do her thing? It's super-cute having a mother duck roaming the barnyard with a bunch of little ones. Who couldn't watch this for hours?

However, cute as it is, leaving a mother duck to her own devices --- especially with more than a handful of ducklings --- has seldom turned out well for us in the past. Anconas are a good all-purpose breed; they lay a significant number of eggs each year, forage well, and still have good brooding / mothering instincts. That said, their ducklings always seem to start disappearing after a few days. With the mother preoccupied by the large brood, it's easy for a barn cat to pick off a straggler. Or for a straggler to fall into a hole that's too big to get out of. Or to get lost in the tall weeds. And so on. And so forth.

We decided it made most sense to capture the mother duck, and all her ducklings, and move them into a pasture pen in a fallow portion of the garden. These pens are 4x8, so the little ones have plenty of room to scurry around. The pen gives them security, and allows us to keep feed and water in front of them all the time. Inside that pen, there are plenty of weeds and bugs for them to snack on. Plus, their droppings will fertilize the garden for next year.

Mother Duck objected to our plan, and tried to escape, but she was easy to catch. She didn't want to run away from her ducklings, and the ducklings were slow. I snagged her next to the barn, HFG scooped the ducklings into a box, and we carried them all out to the garden. Within a few minutes, they'd settled in and were again gathered around Mother Duck.

The other advantage of doing it this way: we'll be able to keep track of the new ducklings very easily as they get older and feather out. We need to cull some of the other ducks this fall, as they're getting on the older side and their egg production is slowing down. Once the new ones have matured and grown their feathers, we'll gender-check them. We'll likely butcher most of the new little drakes, but keep all the females. We'll then cull a corresponding number of old females before turning these new ones loose in the barn.

Not to get too far ahead of ourselves, of course. But with the whole brood now safely in a garden pen, I feel very confident about their safety and long-term survival.

Crazy Ducks

Ducks are a wonderful addition to any small farm, especially one with an area that's perpetually wet or swampy (which seems to describe about 90% of Michigan farms). It never ceases to amaze me the way the ducks go rushing out into any kind of nasty weather; in fact, the wetter it gets, the more they seem to enjoy themselves. They even enjoy flopping around and soaking themselves in snow drifts.

A couple of other things to keep in mind about ducks: they are easily excitable, and virtually impossible to keep contained.

We've had several different breeds of duck over the years, and all of them (with the exception of Muscovies, which are genetically distinct from the Mallard-descended ducks which predominate in the USA) have been "hyper." They see a person (or dog, or anything else) coming, and they all start running in a pack, flapping their wings, and making lots of noise. This does make them fairly easy to herd, once you figure out where to position yourself. The key is to get behind them, and start them moving away from you. If the flock begins moving too much toward one side or the other, they can often be "nudged" back into line just by holding one's arm out toward the "wrong" side and/or moving that way slightly.

But if you get ducks, expect them to get loose. They're narrow and very flexible. I've never seen birds that can squeeze themselves through such tight spaces. Leave a door or gate ajar just a bit, or put up a woven-wire fence with squares larger than 4x4, and they're going to find a way through. Or if there's any kind of gap at the bottom of any portion of a fence or gate, they will find a way to squeeze under it. It's just what they do. They love to roam over a wide range, exploring and foraging --- but if you don't want them in your garden (and, trust me, if you have anything of value growing in there...you don't), you'd better put a very tight fence around it. And be zealous about keeping the gate closed. Ditto any area with fruiting brambles or grape vines that are close to the ground --- they will wipe out the fruit in the blink of an eye. Lately we've been fighting a losing battle keeping them out of the kids' play area in our back yard; the photos I posted today are of the dozen ducks that I chased out of there this morning.

The last few years, we've been raising a breed called Anconas and like them a lot. For starters, they're just plain beautiful to look at. But more importantly, they're outstanding foragers, excellent egg layers, quite cold-hardy (we didn't lose a single one this epic winter), pretty good at setting and mothering, and a reasonable size for eating. (We can squeeze a meal out of one of them for our family, but for Sunday dinner with even one other person, we usually put two of them in the Crock Pot and make soup with the leftovers.)

We like to get a straight run (unsexed) of 30 from Cackle Hatchery. The cost is about $4 per duckling, plus shipping, and that yields 15 adult females. In the laying season, that gives us plenty of large delicious eggs. We butcher most of the males when they're a few months old, but leave a few so we can have fertilized eggs (and ducklings, if a duck decides to make a nest and go broody). As with all Mallard-derived ducks, mature drakes (males) are easily identified by a curly little feather sticking up on their tail.

Anconas stay pretty productive for a few years; after that, it's best to butcher and brine them, before doing a slow roast in the crock pot. The process is similar to what I described recently for our old turkeys, but we usually brine and roast the ducks whole. Your plan should be to butcher the mature, burned-out layers while your juvenile replacements are growing in the brooder and confined pasture pens. Once they feather out, you'll have a really tough time distinguishing them from the older birds. And if the two groups mix...good luck sorting them again.

Now that I think about it, we have several excess mature drakes out there that need to be culled. I think I know what we're going to be enjoying for Sunday dinner this week...

Farewell, Drake

We had a notable passing last night: our ancient Muscovy drake finally succumbed to old age. "Drake" is of course the word for a male duck, and for lack of creativity we simply called him that as his proper name.

Drake was special because he was among the first birds we ever got. Muscovies are weird ducks; unlike pretty much every other breed, they are not descended from Mallards. They're a South American tree bird, and can fly. They also tend to be good mothers, and are highly self-sufficient.

Soon after moving to Illinois, we got word from a friend that another farmer was looking to get rid of all her Muscovies. Being new to the whole farming thing, we were willing to try nearly anything. The idea was to experiment with a variety of livestock before settling on something. So, we gladly took the dozen or so Muscovies off this person's hands. This must've been nearly ten years ago.

I liked the Muscovies, but was pretty much alone in that opinion. Mrs. Yeoman Farmer found their odd rituals and noises to be a little strange, and she especially disliked how ugly these birds could be. Especially the males. I agreed that they weren't exactly beautiful, but sort of endearing in their own way. Still, I assured MYF that we'd focus on more conventional duck breeds going forward.

As the years passed, the Muscovies gradually died off one by one. They never did prove themselves to be very good mothers, and I don't think we ever got more than a handful of ducklings to survive to adulthood. By the time we moved to Michigan four years ago, we were down to just a couple of Muscovies...including Drake. They stuck to themselves, and did not even interact with the other ducks.

The last females died of something or other, and then it was just Drake. He seemed kind of lonely, being the only Muscovy, and still didn't interact with any other birds. He simply kept to himself, minded his own business, and carried on.

I didn't have the heart to butcher him. Not only would the meat have been terribly tough, but it just didn't seem right. No, he wasn't a pet. But he was a fixture. One of our first birds, and easily the oldest on the property. The grand old man. A survivor. One who'd made the big interstate trip in our Noah's Ark On Wheels. One who, even in his old age, the other male birds stayed out of the way of and showed respect to. Who could butcher a creature like that?

In recent months, it was clear that Drake was slowing down. Then, last night, Big Little Brother came to my office and said he was worried, because Drake could hardly walk. I asked him to bring Drake inside, and I held the bird in my arms. He'd definitely lost weight. I set him down, and he indeed could barely walk.

I thanked BLB for being so attentive, then cuddled Drake a little and talked to him as I carried him back to the barn for what I knew might be the last time. I told him what a good Drake he'd been, and that we'd appreciated having him on our farm for so long.

When I opened the barn this morning, I immediately looked for Drake. There was no sign of him with the other birds, so I looked all over the barn as I did my chores. At last, I found the spot where he'd finally run out of gas --- in the sheep area, not far from the door where he used to go out to play in the rain puddles.

No, I didn't shed any tears. And we didn't give him a special burial. But I did think about him a lot today, and I will miss him. It's the odd creatures like Drake which make a small farm so much fun.

Hanging in Here

Sorry for the slow posting of late; we are here, but buried under the summer's work on the farm. Add to it a slew of professional work (my business is opinion research, particularly political, which spikes during the summer and fall months of even-numbered years), and it's been hard to come up for air.

For those who are curious, Tabasco continues to hang in there as well. We got a refill on her medications; I think the vet was a little surprised to hear she stabilized, but gave us a month's worth of pills for her. We've kept on spoiling her rotten, letting her have first crack at the best dinner scraps. She's been acting very old and slow, but content and not in a lot of pain. So...for the time being we're going to keep appreciating every extra day we get to have her in our lives, even as we prepare ourselves for the day when it's clear we won't be able to let her keep going on.

My goal for the weekend is to butcher the six remaining Pekin ducks. Or maybe fewer, if Homeschooled Farm Girl prevails and convinces me to keep a one or two of the females.

"Why do you want us to keep one?" I asked her.

"Because I like them," she replied.

When you're a Daddy's Girl, that's usually enough to prevail.

Worth It?

Can you make money at farming? Perhaps a better question is: Is it worth your time? But in answering that question, you need to give some thought to all the various meanings of the word "worth."

Let me give one example that's on my mind from yesterday. As I've posted before, when we lived in Illinois we developed a nice clientelle that was interested in duck eggs. They're hard to find, rarely appear in stores, and those who really want them are willing to pay a premium. We charge $5/dozen.

Since we're talking "worth it," let's first look at some basic facts. Last spring, we ordered a straight run of 30 Cayuga ducklings. They cost us $93. We lost a couple of them to accidents and random fatalities, and I butchered about ten of the males. Right now, I think we have 18 or so Cayugas in the barn. A few of them are males that escaped my knife last fall. Figure we have 15 females. (I should mention that Cayugas are not an optimal laying duck, but Mrs. Yeoman Farmer prefers their eggs, and the males provide a bigger carcass than the specialized laying breeds like Khaki Campbells.)

We got a few eggs from precocious layers last fall, but not enough to pack up and take to market. They began laying in notable numbers in January. At their peak, were were getting over a dozen eggs a day from the flock. That's tapered off in the last week or so, and we're now getting 6-8 eggs per day.

Yesterday, I took a load of 27 dozen eggs to Chicago with me. We have a Filipino customer who brines them in big buckets of salt water and sells the finished product in their ethnic community. In my previous trips this year, I've sold another 15 dozen to him and various other customers.

So, right now, we've pocketed $210. Not bad, and the ducks aren't done laying. But consider all the expenses I haven't listed (and can't easily compute): heat lamps to brood the ducklings, high protein feed for their first few months of life, all the layer ration they've eaten since, electricity to run the extra fridge, etc. There's also the matter of transportation costs, getting the eggs to the customer. I mostly get around this by finding a professional reason to go to Chicago, and take the eggs with me. Still, this is not a huge financial return by any standard. And there is also the matter of time. Not only gathering the eggs, but also washing them. Packing them. Driving to the place(s) where we can meet the customer.

Now, consider the other rewards. First, we had ten delicious duck dinners; one Cayuga drake is just enough to feed our family (By contrast, Khaki Campbell drakes are so small, we'd need two for a meal). How often have you eaten duck in the last year? In your lifetime? Second, we had a good supply of surplus eggs to eat; we eat mostly chicken eggs, but there were plenty of cracked and otherwise unsalable duck eggs for us to eat.

The remaining rewards are more intangible: First, at least three people who otherwise cannot have eggs in their diet because of allergies...got to eat eggs again. It's difficult to describe the joy on a person's face, when they thank you for even having your product available. As parents of children with lots of food allergies, this is something we understand very well. Second, I've gotten to connect with our Filipino customer again, and experience his happiness at again being able to supply a product. He does these eggs as a side business, and if we don't have eggs...he doesn't have eggs. And his customers usually cannot find them elsewhere.

We've known this person and his wife for many years now, and have come to enjoy seeing them and talking with them. In fact, to be honest, a call from him last winter was what gave me the nudge to again expand our duck flock. I wouldn't be keeping more than a handful of females if (1) I didn't have him as a customer who'll take every egg and (2) he wasn't so appreciative and personally connected to us. If it was a question of cold hard numbers, and loading our eggs on a truck to go to a factory, I'd almost certainly have said "forget it," even if the money was the same.

So I guess at the end of the day, when you're trying to decide if supplying a farm product is "worth it," it's as important to consider the intangible rewards alongside the tangible ones. For $210, given what we've spent and the time it's taken, I'd be hard pressed to say these ducks have been worth the trouble. But for $210, plus the relationships with our customers?

Yes. Absolutely.

Special Eggs

If you'll indulge me one more post about eggs, I promise I'll be brief.

As noted in previous posts, our kids have celiac disease and a number of other food allergies, and this was an important reason we originally decided to move to the country and take more control of our food supply. It's also made us highly sensitive to the special food requirements that others may have, and interested in helping them obtain what they need.

I never would've imagined it, but there are some people who are allergic to chicken eggs (even those raised on pasture in the most wholesome of conditions), but have no problem with duck eggs. Actually, as I think more about it, I shouldn't be surprised that there are people in this situation: our children cannot drink cow's milk, no matter how it's cultured, but they do just fine with cheese and yogurt and other cultured products made from raw goat's milk.

Anyway, if you think goat milk is hard to find...just try tracking down duck eggs. Even the local Meijer supermarket is now fairly well stocked with goat milk; it's expensive, but they have it. But I'll bet ten-to-one that none of my American readers has a grocery store nearby that stocks duck eggs. Maybe if you live in the Chinatown of a large city. But otherwise? Forget it.

We love duck eggs; they have a higher fat content than chicken eggs, and have a wonderfully rich flavor. We've enjoyed raising Cayuga, Magpie, and Khaki Campbell ducks, which are all excellent laying breeds. But here's the funny thing: once you put the word out in online directories that you have duck eggs...the folks with allergies to chicken eggs will find you. Fast. So will the Asians who want duck eggs for pickling and brining. When we lived in Illinois, we developed a nice little business supplying duck eggs to restaurants, Filipinos, and those with allergies in the Chicago area.

And then we moved to Michigan, and were no longer able to get to Chicago regularly. We cut the flock back quite a bit...but some of our old customers kept calling my cell phone and emailing me. Do you have any duck eggs? I really miss being able to eat eggs. You have no idea how integral eggs are to a normal diet until you can't eat any. Kind of like gluten is for our kids. If rice was as rare as duck eggs, I'd be burning up the phone lines trying to ensure a steady supply.

So...we bought a bunch of Cayuga ducklings last spring. Mrs Yeoman Farmer much prefers their eggs to those laid by Khaki Campbells (personally, I can't tell the difference...and neither can most people), so she can enjoy any that go unsold or that we can't deliver. Cayuga eggs are especially fun because they have a dark green (sometimes almost black) tint to the shell --- you can literally make Green Eggs and Ham. They started laying three or four eggs a day recently, and by early this week I'd managed to accumulate two dozen. Yesterday I needed to travel to Chicago on business, so shot an email off to one of my old customers who works in the heart of the Loop.

He didn't get the email until the day before I was set to leave, but immediately replied. YES, absolutely he was interested. He was off site in meetings until 1:45; could I come by his building after that?

No problem. I took the South Shore Line train to Chicago, laptop slung over one shoulder and my other hand grasping a shopping bag with two dozen very special green eggs. Then I took them on the CTA Red Line and into my meeting on the Near North Side. Then to Holy Name Cathedral for the 12:10 Mass, and to Starbucks as I grabbed a sandwich and coffee and checked email. Back onto the CTA State Street Subway and into the heart of the Loop, down a side street, into the lobby of a major bank...and into the hands of one very grateful man who hadn't enjoyed an egg for nearly a year.

We exchanged warm words for a few minutes, and then he retreated to the elevator and I headed for Millennium Station. Yes, he paid me a very fair price for the very special eggs I'd brought. But there really isn't any amount of money that can produce the joy that of knowing I've supplied something he's waited so eagerly for and cannot find anywhere else.

A Time to Plan - and Dream

One of the few fun things about winter on a farm in Michigan is spending time poring over catalogs and planning for the upcoming growing season. Mrs. Yeoman Farmer is the farm's designated gardener, and she loves sketching out which beds will be used for which plants. The task involves rotating certain plants into different beds, and making sure that certain plants are not grown in certain other beds. She also needs to decide roughly which week/month each bed will be planted, so I can make sure I've hauled and spread manure in the right places early enough for it to break down and be worked thoroughly into the soil.

MYF has a core of seed companies that she likes to order from (see the blog's right margin for links), and spends hours comparing prices and varieties in their respective catalogs. Just a couple of days ago, we ordered our seed potatoes (this coming year we hope for a large enough yield so we can keep our own seed for 2011 --- with the adoption of Yeoman Farm Baby this last year, we didn't get the potatoes watered enough, and the yield barely covered our eating needs).

I have no less fun making plans for livestock. How many new laying pullets should we get? How many broiler chicks? Ducklings? Goslings? Turkeys? Which breeds? How should we stagger them, to ensure enough chicken tractor pens are available inside for brooding --- and available outside to move them into once they're feathered? Do I need to build more tractors? Which hatcheries have the best deals on which birds?

If you've never raised chickens (or other poultry) before, I highly recommend McMurray Hatchery as your first stop for shopping. They are one of the most experienced, and widely regarded to be one of the best in the business. And their variety of birds is staggering; if you can't find it in McMurray's catalog, you'll probably only find it from a preservation center like Sand Hill  or other highly specialized breeder (Magpie ducks come immediately to mind - we liked the breed, but had to get them from Holderread's Waterfowl Farm in Oregon). Anyway, the McMurray Catalog is tremendous fun to browse and let your dreams run wild. You can view everything online, and I recommend going online to place your order, but we personally like the experience of holding that full-color catalog in our hands and thumbing through it. You'll also find excellent advice for getting your new birds started. And McMurray has one of the best poultry guarantees in the business. Their birds are excellent, healthy, and when something tragic happens in shipping they make it right.

However, all of that service, and the beautiful catalog, and the top-notch website...comes with a price. McMurray's prices tend to be significantly higher than from other suppliers, especially when you factor in shipping. A good lower-cost alternative we've been happy with is Cackle Hatchery in Missouri. They don't have the same fancy chicken selection, their website isn't slick, it sometimes takes a really long time to get through to them on the phone, their printed catalog is all black-and-white ... but they have most anything a small farm would want to raise. They have a good selection of the most common laying breeds, a good broiler meat chick, and all the heritage turkeys and waterfowl breeds we've wanted of late. An especially good deal, if you're not choosy, is their "surplus rare turkey" package, where you can get a box of 15 or 20 heritage turkey poults that are left over from when the orders for specific breeds have been filled. Cackle's prices are great, and their shipping charges are very reasonable.

Here in Michigan, our local feed store has an even better deal: they send a large combined order to a hatchery that's just a couple of hours away. This yields a bulk discount, no shipping charges, and no interstate shipping stress for the birds. Best of all, the feed store has a special deal: for each 50# bag of chick starter you buy, they'll give you ten free broiler chicks. Since the feed costs $8.50 per bag, and the ten chicks would normally cost $10.00, this deal is beyond a no-brainer. Anyway, this particular hatchery's selection is very basic, but covers most of what we want to raise.

I'm thinking we'll get 30 or 40 of those broiler chicks, 25 Black Australorp pullet chicks ($2 each), and 20 White Pekin ducklings ($2.75 each). We can easily brood up to 100 chicks in one of our tractor pens, so we'll put the broilers and pullets into one pen; the ducklings will get a separate pen. All these chicks come in to the feed store on April 7th, so they should be ready to go outside the first week of May. Because the local hatchery doesn't have heritage breed turkeys, and their goslings are $2 more expensive than Cackle's (even after taking shipping into account), I'll order 16 goslings, and a box of 20 surplus rare turkeys, from Cackle to arrive in early May just as the brooder pens are being cleared out; the goslings will go in one and the turkeys in the other. (By ordering all the Cackle birds at the same time, we get a big break on shipping.)

Longtime blog readers know that we color-code our layer chicks, so we know how old each one is; after two years, it's time to put them in the freezer and soup pot. Last year, we raised Buff Orpingtons...so the Australorps will be easy to distinguish from them.

I'll probably have to build a couple of more tractor pens for the garden, but that'll be a fun project to do with the Homeschooled Farm Children...and we've built so many of them now, they come together quickly.

Lots of things to plan. Lots of things to dream about. Lots of fun in the year ahead.

A Different Kind of Adoption

This may seem like an odd move, but bear with me. I'd like to merge two recent streams of posts: our adoption of Yeoman Farm Baby, and the natural hatching/brooding of baby birds on the farm.

I've enjoyed the comments and input from various readers, who have asked about and shared their experiences with allowing various types of birds to hatch and brood their own young. Whether you're doing this for the educational experience, the economics, to fly under the radar of NAIS, or purely for the entertainment value...hatching your own baby birds is a wonderful experience and I highly recommend it. But the unfortunate reality is that many good egg layers don't make good nest setters. And many good nest setters don't make good mothers. With broodiness and mothering instincts having been so aggressively culled by commercial hatcheries, it's remarkable to find a bird that can both hatch and successfully mother her own young.

One answer that we've found to this problem: adoption! Unlike larger mammals, mother birds are not terribly particular about which babies are "theirs." A good mother hen will look after and brood any chicks she can get her wings around. We saw this happen frequently in Illinois, when on occasion we had multiple brood hens in the barn at the same time. It was actually fairly amusing to watch as days passed, and the brood of the less interested hen gradually shrank while the brood of the more aggressive/interested hen gradually increased. I still remember one hen that ended up with something like eighteen chicks streaming across the yard with her (which was actually too many --- even she couldn't keep track of that many chicks, and they kept getting lost. And I kept venturing out to help, because there's nothing quite as forlorn as the peeping of a stray chick stranded in the tall grass).

We've observed something similar with ducklings. We've had several ducks of various breeds successfully hatch a nest of eggs, with even greater variability in mothering ability. The Muscovies have been by far the best setters and mothers, with Cayugas a close second. The Khaki Campbells are not bad at setting, but we have yet to see one successfully mother her hatchlings. Every Khaki that has ventured off the nest with a brood has quickly lost every single duckling. Khakis don't look back to see if the ducklings are keeping up, and they don't respond to distress calls from little ones who have fallen behind. We got to the point where we would immediately remove any ducklings a Khaki hatched, and either give them to a mother Cayuga (assuming we had one with new ducklings) or brood them ourselves under a heat lamp.

BTW, I don't say any of this to diss Khakis or Muscovies: they have their place, and Khakis are extremely good egg producers. We had a lot of Khakis when we were producing duck eggs commercially in Illinois, and at one time had a good flock of Muscovies. But we've chosen Cayugas as our primary homestead duck because their egg production is respectable, they are good natural setters/mothers, and they get to a nice eating size. We ultimately decided against Muscovies in part because the females are too small to make much of a meal, but also because Mrs Yeoman Farmer thinks those "caruncles" the males have on their faces/heads are disgusting to look at (not to mention the bizarre social behavior that Muscovies engage in when they're together in groups. I still keep a few Muscovies, just for fun (and where MYF doesn't have to look at them), but they're now too old to good for much of anything.

We've never had very good luck getting a non-broody hen or duck to accept and mother baby birds --- but geese are different. Earlier this year, we bought several goslings from a hatchery and brooded them under heat lamps for some time. Then, when we turned the goslings loose in the pasture, something amazing happened: our two older Gray Toulouse geese swooped in and adopted all eight of them. They proved to be excellent mothers, and took great care of the brood all summer. They were extremely protective, and dutifully led their charges to fresh grass and water (and stood guard attentively as the goslings grazed). The lesson we took from that incident: next year, we will put the goslings in with the mature geese much sooner. Perhaps not as brand new hatchings, but hopefully after significantly less time under the electric heat lamps. I may also try giving the geese a few ducklings at the same time, to see how that works out.

Because adoption need not be limited to the same species! We've had real life "ugly ducklings" hatched on our farm; one of the hens laid an egg in a duck nest when the duck was taking a quick break. Chicken eggs have a shorter incubation period than duck eggs, and the chick ended up emerging along with the ducklings. He/she managed to keep up with the web-footed siblings for several days, but the problem was when Mother Duck took her little charges through puddles. We eventually had to remove the chick for that reason, but it probably would've worked out alright had the mother been a hen and the adopted bird been a duckling. And I bet a goose would be an even better mother to a duckling than a hen would be.

A final thought, for those of you interested in hatching your own eggs: try to find a broody bird to do it for you. We've never had much luck with the commercially-available incubators. We did get some chicken eggs to hatch in them, but usually the temperature ended up a little too high or a little too low (or both, when the air didn't circulate properly). But we never got turkey eggs, duck eggs, or goose eggs to hatch; waterfowl eggs have special humidity requirements (picture a mother duck sitting back down on the nest after taking a quick swim), and humidity is difficult to adjust in most of the more affordable incubators. We decided a long time ago to give up on incubators altogether, and either purchase baby birds or let a broody hen/duck hatch them for us.

Waterfowl at Work

I recently blogged about how the "chicken tractors" have been helping us get Mrs Yeoman Farmer's garden ready. As the young birds grow older, they seem to eat more weeds and drop more fertilizer by the day. And as I type this, MYF is out in the garden beginning to till some of the garden beds.

The one pen with 15 ducklings and 9 goslings has been particularly productive. As waterfowl are voracious consumers of grass, we thought it made sense to put them in charge of clearing sod from the brand new beds we want to plow up in the lawn.

After just over one week, moving the pen basically once per day, take a look at what they've been able to accomplish:

This is a classic example of sustainable agriculture, and working with nature rather than declaring war on it. And we will enjoy remembering this lesson as we feast on goose all winter long.

One Big Adoption Agency

Our Khaki Campbell ducks have proven very flexible about "adopting" ducklings that other ducks hatched (but for some reason abandoned). Looks like the "industrial ag" folks who bred the Khaki Campbell as an egg-laying machine couldn't eliminate their mothering instinct. And thank God for that. I can't remember the last time we had to buy a duckling.

This one managed to pick up a massive swarm of ten ducklings, in part by collecting a few strays that hatched in a nest by the front door. She's proven herself an outstanding mother, moving her brood all over the property in search of food --- and, after nearly two weeks, not losing a single one of those ducklings. Call her the "duckling magnet."

A few days ago, I found a single very young duckling running around the vineyard unattended. It most likely hatched earlier than a duck's other eggs, and wandered off the nest while she was waiting on those other ones. I tried adding it to the "duckling magnet" brood, but the other ducklings were simply too much larger; the new one couldn't keep up. But, remarkably, another Khaki (whose eggs likely didn't hatch, but whose hormones were likely still elevated in a motherly direction) grabbed onto him. He now follows her everywhere, and she's been doing an excellent job with him.

And, finally, this is the oddest collection of ducklings. Where this Khaki (the one on the far right) picked up this brood, no one knows. But they've been together for weeks now, and are thriving. Sometimes it's best not to ask too many questions, and just let nature do what nature will do.

Little Surprises

While I'm on a roll posting about "little things," I wanted to mention a few new little things that were complete surprises.

First off, a Khaki Campbell duck suddenly showed up one morning with a swarming brood of ten --- count em --- TEN little duckings. Where she'd built that nest, nobody knew. And roughly three or four days later, she still has all ten. She's remarkably disciplined, and they follow her closely everywhere she goes.

An even bigger surprise was the hen that showed up in the barn a couple of days ago with six little chicks. This particular hen is the sister of the one I've mentioned before; both of them are cross-breeds who were hatched out by a mother hen last year. This one's mothering instincts were so good, she simply disappeared and built a nest I was completely unaware of. Again, she simply showed up one morning with all these chicks. Because she herself is a hybrid, her chicks are all kinds of different colors. Oddly, this morning, she was back --- but now had seven chicks. One of her eggs was probably near hatching when she came off the nest, and the blistering hot weather kept that last chick alive. She likely hatched that chick out last night, and it seems to have fallen right in line with the others.

So while it was sad to lose Dilemma last night, the wonderful thing about a farm is that there are constantly new beginnings...and surprises around every corner.

Busting Out All Over

Ducklings are hatching out fast and furious. For starters, the Magpie family continues to do well. The ducklings are thriving with their mother, and are noticeably larger. In addition, two other Magpie ducklings suddenly appeared one morning --- but they were wandering all over the barnyard without any mother duck to guide them. We assume they wandered off a nest that the mother duck was clinging to, attempting to hatch additional eggs. Anyway, they tried falling in with the other mother Magpie, but couldn't keep up with her in the high weeds. I rescued them, and they're now thriving in the brooder with the chicks.

One of the Khaki Campbells has hatched three ducklings, and so far has been taking good care of them. However, Khakis are one of those notorious "production" breeds that has basically had the mothering instinct bred out of them. We'll watch her closely in the upcoming days, but we may need to put her ducklings into the brooder.

Meanwhile, the Khaki in the hollow tree is in the process of hatching her clutch of eggs. Notice that my presence has made her nervous, and she has puffed up the feathers on her back as a warning (much like a cat does when threatened). Two ducklings are entirely out and getting around nicely, and at least one more egg is half-hatched (I tried to zoom in, but the half-hatched egg isn't really visible in this shot). We'll check back with her in the morning.

UPDATE: Thursday morning, she had six ducklings and had led them the entire length of the vineyard to the "watering hole." About an hour later, she had successfully led the entire brood all the way back to the nest in the tree. Looks like we may have among the rarest birds of all: a Khaki that's a good mother. We'll keep checking.

More on the Magpies

The mother Magpie duck took her brood out for a stroll Sunday morning. The first two hatchlings were keeping up with her fine, but the third kept falling behind. After watching him get disoriented and lost a few times, I took him and put him in the brooder with the turkey poults. At first, they pecked at him and I was a bit concerned. But once he'd dried off, they seemed to welcome him in as one of the gang. We'll keep him there until he's mature enough to turn loose.

Meanwhile, Mama Magpie was joined by a Magpie drake (he's the one with the curly tail feathers), and the two of them have been caring for the ducklings together. He never leaves her side, and chases other birds away when they come too close. It's very sweet.

Latest Arrivals

Remember those duck nests I posted about recently? Those ducklings are beginning to hatch. We really like these heritage breeds, like the Magpie here, that will sit on a nest and mother their own young. Her nest wasn't one of the outdoor ones I showed in the other post; she's been safely nestled in the corner of an outbuilding near the house. She has three hatchlings so far; two are poking out of her feathers, and the other is drying out underneath her. They should be off the nest and walking around the barnyard soon. Stay tuned.

Cicadas

A friend recently commented, in an email sent to several people spread out around the country:

So the cicadas have made their return to the Chicago area, these gross-looking insects that descend on the area every 17 years. But they are really starting to freak me out for a multitude of reasons. First, they tend to only come out at night so when I'm walking my dog, I'm finding myself inadvertently crushing one of the 100s of cicadas covering the sidewalks. Then last week, I got in my car in the early evening and had to wait for a large gathering of Lake Michigan seagulls to clear out the way--they were feasting on the cicadas.

What's bizarre is that 17 years ago, I spent the summer in Chicago and had this same perspective on cicadas. They were obnoxious, and the low hum made it nearly impossible to sleep (particularly since it was so hot, and I was a starving student lacking A/C, so the windows were open all night).

The cicadas haven't arrived here yet (about 90 minutes south of my friend's neighborhood), but I must admit that I'm actually looking forward to when they come out from their long hibernation. Our large flock of free range ducks stays out all night, and I can already picture them working their way across the field feasting on these nasty critters. And then, when the laying hens come pouring out of the hen house first thing in the morning, they'll clean up all the cicadas the ducks didn't get to. Heck, I may be able to stop giving the birds supplemental feed.

Of course, the droning hum may have me singing a different tune after awhile. We still don't have air conditionning, and it'll be interesting to see how loud those cicadas will get. Not to mention the sounds of duck bills crushing lots of little bug bodies...

Great Nests

We've had several ducks make nests and go broody, in various places all over the property. Some of these nests were in terribly unprotected places, and/or the mother ducks did a lousy job of tending their eggs, and those nests got destroyed.

Several are off in the high weeds, often inside the wire enclosures we've set up around young fruit trees to keep the sheep out. Somehow, ducks can manage to squeeze through or under any fence anyone can build...meaning they figure out odd places to make nests.

One that I especially like is this Khaki Campbell's set-up, in the hollow of an enormous Green Ash tree that borders my vineyard.

And this Cayuga has picked perhaps the safest location: under a pile of old pallets. I don't know how she manages to get in or out, but she's been our most faithful nest-sitter this year.

As I said, there are many more such nests in various places around the property; too many to picture in just one post. I love having heritage breeds of ducks, like Cayugas and Magpies, which will hatch and brood their own young.

Although even the Khaki Campbells --- a production egg duck --- will hatch a clutch of eggs with the best of the heritage breeds, they have proven themselves to be absolutely horrible mothers. Time and again, I've seen them start with eight or ten hatchlings...only to lose one or two per day, until they have zero. Starting last year, we began simply taking ducklings away from the Khaki mothers and brooding them ourselves under heat lamps.

Of course, we can't count our ducklings before they hatch. But hopefully we'll be getting plenty of delicious duck before too long.

Special Delivery

Apart from the lifestyle and being able to produce healthy food for our family, one of the most rewarding things about a small farm is providing specialty products to people who truly appreciate them.

A prime example is duck eggs. Unless you live in an Asian enclave, you will never find duck eggs for sale in an American supermarket. There are many reasons, but it's chiefly because (1) you can't cram ducks into factory-style cages like you can with hens; and (2) there is little market for burned-out laying ducks. Most laying hens become Chicken Noodle Soup; there is no similar commercial demand for ducks. But free range laying ducks are a wonderful addition to a small farm: they are easy to raise, fun to watch, and provide plenty of large delicious eggs. The fat content is slightly higher than in chicken eggs, giving them a richer flavor. And there's nothing as good as duck soup.

But most importantly, some people who are allergic to chicken eggs can eat duck eggs. Several such people have found us, and they're now among our most loyal customers. Every time I'm in the Chicago area, I email them...and they figure out a way to meet me to get their duck eggs. Tomorrow, I am taking ten dozen to a woman in the city who had to go without eggs all winter as our ducks were taking a collective break. Last Friday, when my daughter and I walked around the Loop, our first stop was at an office building near St. Peter's; an executive, who'd last been able to get our eggs in November, happily came down to get three dozen from us. Chatting with him in the lobby about all he planned to do with the long-awaited eggs, the excitement in his voice was palpable. He emailed me a few days later, again thanking us for the delivery...and asking when we'd be able to bring more.

And then there's my Filipino customer, who lives in the far western suburbs. He is disabled, but has made a side business of taking our duck eggs and brining them in buckets of salt water; this product is a big seller in the Filipino community. He and his wife have driven all over Chicagoland, meeting me in crazy places (usually at the airport before dawn, when I have a business trip), buying upwards of 30 dozen at a time.

Before we started doing this, I wondered why so many people refer to farming as a "vocation." The more customers we get to meet, the better I understand it. You can't do this for the money---and not just because, after the expenses, there is so little profit to a micro enterprise like ours. It's because there's no way to put a price on the smile a person gives you, or the heartfelt gratitude they express, when you've brought them something they cannot find anywhere else.