Chocolate Duck Makes Bid For Freedom

A while back one of our Muscovy ducks mysteriously disappeared. It was about the same time as we lost our drake Cayuga duck. Whether it was a natural predator or they fell victim to wandering too far and didn't realise that not everybody's dogs are duck-friendly I do not know.
Anyway, there is no happy ending. There is no surprise reappearance a few weeks later.

A new chocolate Muscovy duck

This left us with our drake Muscovy and two females. As well as their eggs, the Muscovies give us birds for the table as each year we hatch some out under broody hens. Their meat is just about the tastiest of any animal, bird or mammal, that we keep.

So when a friend said they were thinning down their Muscovy flock I decided to replace the chocolate brown girl we had lost. Sue picked her up late one Saturday afternoon and when we got her home we put her straight into her own house in the chicken pen overnight. The hope was that in the morning she would emerge, meet the other Muscovies and hang about with them.
But no!
She flew straight over the fence, into the field and then across the road. The first I knew of this was Sue waking me up to come and retrieve her.

I seriously thought we had no chance. Muscovy ducks are very strong fliers and one more flight would take her too far away. If she got on the pond at the end of the track opposite we would have no chance of getting her.

Fortunately the ground was solid so we could skirt right around the field and approach her from the other side. She flew straight back over the road.
More careful approach and she started heading back toward the farm. I kept just far enough away to encourage her to keep moving without spooking her into flight. The smallholding she came from did not offer her the opportunity to fly freely so her wings were now tired from the novel experience of her long flights. But it was going to be a long waddle across the field, over the dyke and back onto the smallholding.

We eventually got there and I managed to persuade her to go into the cage with the Silkie hens.

Next stage of the plan was to move a couple of the other Muscovies in there with her so she could make friends with them and hopefully learn the ways of our smallholding.


After several nights refusing to go into a house, she has finally learned from the others and follows one of them in at night. She has also learned not to panic when we go into the cage. We'll leave it another couple of weeks before she gets another taste of unfenced freedom.