Kitchen Garden Forum

Why am I in love with ducks?
Well, I like all our chickens, but compared with them, ducks...........

Lay larger, tastier eggs, even if they don't come nice and clean out of nest boxes.

Live happily together in flocks. We have two large duck houses and one small one. The residents are very happy to operate our shift system for coming out and around the field.

They are obedient and can be driven back into their runs with just a few moves of the arm.

The drakes rarely fight with each other, except a bit in the spring!

Once hatched, they grow to pretty much full size in a few weeks.

They sound very well trained Alan. Perhaps you should send a flock of them to Westminster to show in the inmates there how they should all behave. I can think of a few of them there who ought to be driven back into their runs with just a few moves of the arm!

Seriously it must make looking after them much easier. Tell us a little more about your shift system for coming out into the field. Do you keep some of them penned up for part of the time and just release sections of them out at one time, and is there a reason for this? I can see that it may make sense to keep the different breeds segregated and possibly easier to count them in and out at the end of every shift if you're worried a fox may be around.

I would love to have ducks but alas the council will not let us have them

Just thinking about ducks, then realised I have never actually owned any......looked after them on the farms I used to work at as a lad, but that's not quite the same....maybe in my retirement....

Robo - this business of keeping poultry in one's back garden is a very contentious one. Our house has a restrictive covenant on it forbidding the keeping of poultry but as far as I,m aware there is no council restriction and I wonder who could seriously enforce a restrictive covenant now if the property was not owned by the council. . Of course during the war people were actively encouraged to keep chickens to aid the food supply and I can recall a number of gardens in houses near my childhood home where there were bodged together chicken houses and runs out together from whatever material was available at the time.

I suspect it would be very unkind to keep a solitary duck as I'm sure they need the company of their own kind but I wonder whether a single duck "kept as a pet" would invite the same response. Or, suggests she, "with tongue in cheek" perhaps it could be kept as a "slug pest controller"

Had a pair of Muscovy ducks once, couldn't describe the drake as particularly friendly. Though he was provoked from time to time as our cockerel would pay Mrs Muscovy undue attention. If he managed to catch up with the cockerel he would clamp his tail in his bill and swing him about from side to side, made quite a racket but kept us amused.

Primrose I'm talking about our plot I don't think our neighbors would be happy with ducks next door to them although I did have chickens years ago when our girls were young but different neighbors now ,funny thing the other week one of the plot holders in our town put a post on face book about her chickens and ducks being used as football's by local yobs seems they killed all the ducks and twenty six chickens so I asked the question whom on the council gave her permission for ducks and so many chickens turns out she is a local councillor she also said it was a communal coup for all the plots which was a pack of lies she also said the permission was a long standing ancient agreement which I suspect was more lies but I won't let this rest I will be asking questions at the next allotment society meeting

Our local pub has a collection of ducks and chickens, living happily all together, in an enclosure next to the children's playground in the garden. The kids love them!

Here are my current favourites. Three Cayuga ducks about 5 to 6 weeks old and a Cayuga drake who is a couple of weeks younger and unrelated to the ducks, so we are looking forward to breeding them come next spring.
The drake is the little fellow; his name varies from Ho-Nah-E-Geh-Dah (which was the name of the last chief of the Cayuga tribe in America and means, I am told, Snow Darkness) to Bill, for those whose Cayuga language is a bit rusty

I am also very fond of our last hatch of the season, a mixture of Rouens and White Campbells, who are now seven weeks old, nearly full size and fully independent around the field.

They are so beautiful Alan! I can definitely see the attraction!

I am black but beautiful, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Cedar, as the curtains of Solomon. (Song of Solomon 1:4)
Our lovely Cayugas, now a month older and large and proud, even the younger drake.

Lovely plumage which I imagine must glow in the sunshine . Have they been sneaking a few feathers from any neighbouring peacocks ?

Primrose wrote:Lovely plumage which I imagine must glow in the sunshine . Have they been sneaking a few feathers from any neighbouring peacocks ?

Sometimes the sheen is blue, sometimes green, depending on the angle the light strikes them.

They are stunning, Alan, I don't think I have ever seen that breed before.