Two Little Ducks - Quack Quack

Just over a month ago one of our ducks went missing. Shortly after, I noticed that there were only ten guinea fowl roosting on the fence at night (there should be 12). Now there are only 9 guinea fowl every night.
So what's been going on? Do we have a case of poultry poaching? Or maybe a fox has been sneaking in? Are the birds getting ill?
There's no evidence to support any of these theories.

But there is this:

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To be honest, they didn't come as a total surprise. I rather suspected that Mrs Duck had taken herself off to sit on eggs and we did occasionally see her when she made brief forays to the food tray. She always disappeared off towards Weasel Ridge, which is somewhat overgrown at the moment, but it took me three weeks to locate her on her nest.

Once I knew where the nest was I waited for her to go for food and then was able to count nine eggs. Unfortunately only two have reached duckling stage, but that doesn't really matter. For when I let the birds incubate au naturel it is just really to keep the birds happy. Any offspring are a bonus and we always end up with significantly fewer young birds than if we took them away from nature and protected them in pens.

The chances of these two making it to duckhood are still slim, for there are many threats. But for the moment we will just enjoy their cuteness, watching their little clockwork legs whirring round at a million miles an hour to keep up with mums and dad.

And just so you don't get too attached, if they do become big enough they will be for the pot. We can't keep every cute animal we have as a pet. We are, after all, a smallholding and not a zoo.

As for those guinea fowl I mentioned, I've found two sitting on a loose pile of eggs (so many that they keep rolling out the sides) in the comfrey patch and one hidden under a rough patch of sage.

Let's hope we have more success than last year when only two made it through the autumn rains.

For now, I'll leave you with a couple more cute duckling piccies.

"DUCKS! DUCKS! DUCKS!"

The ducks are laying eggs again, but that's really just an excuse for me to post up some half decent photos I managed to get of them. I have three white ducks and three black ducks. You may notice that the number of black ducks has gone down! Two drakes were just proving too much for three girls and one of the girls never got over a serious limp, so when the turkeys finally went to turkey heaven, two ducks went with them too.

As a trio, the black Cayuga ducks now seem much calmer and it was only two days after the 'cull' that they started laying for the first time in 2015. Strangely, one lays blue eggs and one lays white eggs. Pure Cayugas lay blue eggs with a black film. The white ducks lay for a longer season, though one egg a day between the three of them seems to be about as much as they can manage at the moment.

So back to the photography. I always have all sorts of problems with contrast when trying to capture the ducks on 'film'. The Cayugas are wary, only approaching close when I am turning the soil.
The white ducks have become quite friendly though. They have become more adventurous and often wander far into the orchard next door. But they always come waddling back when I call them "DUCKS! DUCKS! DUCKS!"

And when it's time to go into their house for the night they waddle ahead of me, wagging their heads and quacking contentedly.

When I fill the chickens' water buckets and the ducks' paddling pool, they quickly jump in and empty most of it back out again! But at least they are gloriously happy for a while.
Occasionally, if I'm too close, they give me a friendly splash too.

 

 

Snow Comment

Monday morning found me at Wisbech hospital for an Xray and a bloodtest. Needles and I do not exactly get on well, so the nurse was trying to distract me with idle conversation. I commented that we'd escaped lightly on the weather so far this winter.

I made the best of an unscheduled day off work and busied myself all day in the polytunnel. As usual, I fed the chickens late afternoon and as darkness loomed I locked them away. It had been a lovely, crisp winter's day. We've had a lot of those this year.

It wasn't much later that the security lights went on by the stables, triggered by... snow. Within half an hour the ground was covered. By mid evening, the scene outside looked like this...

Taken through the window from the warmth of the kitchen.

I still get very excited when it snows. I could watch it flutter earthwards for hours. And so, on and off, I did. And it just kept on coming, far outperforming the BBC's prediction of possibly 1-3 cm on the high ground (which most definitely does not describe our position here on The Fens).

Tuesday morning saw me up bright and early. There was lots to be done before I headed off for work and I was keen to take some photographs too.

A layer of snow makes everything even flatter!

 

Hopefully the bees are clustered
safely and warmly inside the hives

First job, in the semi-dark, was sweeping the snow off the polytunnel, then on to giving the sheep extra food.

Next the chicken houses were opened to let the chickens out into their snowy pen. They weren't too keen on coming out.


The guinea fowl, as usual, had toughed it out all night. They really are incredibly resilient birds.















The geese just waddled out of their stable in the usual orderly fashion, like soldiers, and stoically continued with life as normal.

The ducks, on the other hand, could not have been more excited. They dived into the snow as they would a pool of water, dipping their heads into it and quacking delightedly. They are never easy to photograph, as they never stop moving and always seem to be walking away. But their black plumage against the gleaming white snow gave me even more problems. Anyway, I managed a couple of half decent images.





I would dearly have loved to have spent the day with my camera. There are only so many different views to be had here on the smallholding, but some of the dykes and drains would have provided some excellent compositions cutting through the flat frozen fenland landscape.

As it was though, work beckoned. The best I could do was a quickly snapped piccie with the phone through the front windscreen.

Do they know it's Christmas time? I'm talking turkey!

Yesterday marked the winter solstice. I'm no more one for celebrating pagan festivals than I am for celebrating Christmas. But have no fear, this is not another bah humbug post.

However, the ebb and flow of the seasons has a huge impact on our lives now that we live off the land. The shortest day marks the time for planting out shallots. They'll be ready for gathering on the longest day. I was kept busy taking cuttings yesterday, so the shallots went in a day late. The soil at the moment is delightful to work.

Anyway, back to our Christmas celebration and this year, for the first time ever, we have been raising our own turkeys, a stag and two hens. For one of them, the shortest day really was the shortest day! What's more, they seemed to sense impending doom. All morning they were behaving oddly, first refusing to come out of their stable, then wandering to parts of the farm to which they had never previously ventured.
The two turkey hens even jumped the gate and mixed it with the sheep in the top paddock. I don't think the stag (that's the boy) is physically capable of jumping a gate any more as he has been making a decent effort to fatten up for Christmas!

But the sheep got curious which resulted in a hasty retreat by the hens... into the sheep shed. I looked away for a moment and, when I looked back, three of the sheep were in the shed. They don't usually spend much time in their unless the weather is foul, but they stayed in there for over five minutes, just staring into the corner. In the end I decided to end the stand off. The poor turkeys were just standing in the corner, hemmed in and completely puzzled about how to extricate themselves from the situation.

So, about 3 o'clock in the afternoon I led the turkey trio back into their stable, as I do every day. But from there I headed to the kitchen to put a large pan of water on to boil. I then got ready an old table top and a broom handle. I'll leave the rest up to your imaginations! (Don't worry, the broom handle's not for bashing them.)



A suitable sunset for the turkey stag to go out on.

While we had everything set up, we decided to thin down the Cayuga ducks as somehow we had ended up with three drakes. Choosing which would go was straightforward, as the biggest of the drakes was also the one with a little too much white to count as a proper Cayuga... He'll be rueing those white feathers now.

An old photo of the Cayugas.
They never stay still long enough for me to get many photos.

This was the first of our ducks we had ever killed for eating.

While we were on a roll, we decided to dispatch our first ever guinea fowl too. Evening is the time for this, as they can simply be plucked (excuse the pun) from their roosting perch. Catching them during the day would be a different proposition altogether.

The best time to catch a guinea fowl.

To cut a long story short we ate the guinea fowl last night. We'd eaten them before, in East Africa, so were keen to see how our own birds would compare. Considering that this bird was well over a year old, it tasted very nice indeed. In fact we'll definitely start 'harvesting' our guinea fowl on a more regular basis from now. The duck we prepared last night and roasted today. Again we were not disappointed. All those slugs from the vegetable patch have obviously given the ducks a very special taste!

As for the two surviving turkey hens, they have spent the whole of today inside their stable, despite the door being open for them to wander at will. Sadly, I think they have been calling for their 'man'.


Earlier in the year on our poultry dispatch and preparation day.
It may not be everybody's cup of tea,
but our birds have great lives and are dispatched quickly.

The turkeys have really surprised us with how gentle and friendly they are. They are a social animal too, never straying far from each other. I really hope that the two birds we have left can get over their loss quickly. When their time comes, which will be later in the winter, they will both go at once since it would clearly be unfair to leave one on its own.

Meanwhile, the days are getting longer now. The chickens have started laying again and tomorrow I've got bean trenches to dig and compost to spread in preparation for the next growing season.


An unlucky rabbit's tail, a peacock and some very luck ducks

It was the rabbit which was unlucky, rather than the tail.

At yesterday's Veg Growers Group, we were talking about protecting early blossoms from wind and frost when somebody pointed out the need to pollenate the blossoms by hand, the ideal tool for this being a rabbit's tail. As a boy I used to have one of these, but goodness knows where it's got to now.
But in one of those unusual coincidences, Gerry caught his very first rabbit of the year yesterday and ran across the goose paddock with it clamped in his jaws, squealing as it went. He took it under the killing bush and proceeded to devour it, starting at the nose and ending at the tail, as he always does.
But one rabbit was not enough for Gerry yesterday. He got another! But his eyes were bigger than his belly and he left half, including a nice fluffy tail.

So I now have myself a professional hand pollenating tool.

In fact, the last two days have been very satisfying indeed.
For starters, the sun has been out, which raises the spirits somewhat.

Not only that, but I spotted a new species for the garden list. Several months ago a bird moved into Don's garden, across the road. We have no idea where it came from, but it has stayed. And this morning it had managed to cross the road and there, stood beside the roadside hedge, stood a male peacock!

Yesterday was also the third meeting of the Vegetable Grower's group which I run. It is going from strength to strength, to the point where if anyone else wants to join we will have to start up a waiting list. Veg of the Month for February was Jerusalem Artichoke and I spent the first half hour of the day digging up a pile of tubers to show, talk about and donate. I also divvied up some mangel wurzel seeds for the other members of the group. This year there will be strong competition for the Mangel Wurzel competition. I may even lose the trophy! We discussed planning the veg plot and rotating crops. And I enjoyed my first taste of goat - not curried but stroganoff. Delicious!  Also enjoyed some warm company and came away with half a dozen rhubarb plants.

I got home and decided to plough on with constructing a raised bed and a hot bed in the polytunnel. More on the hotbed in a future post. Only rapidly failing light stopped me completing the job.

I was a bit gripped off by Sue, who watched a Barn Owl quartering our land. This was pleasing news as I'd not seen one for a few months. The closest I'd come to one was Don telling me he'd found one dead in the ditch by the road.
The Little Owls are active too, calling loudly last night under a full moon. They will be thinking about nesting, so I am glad they seem to have stayed in the old Ash Trees for a second year.

Today I dropped the car in to the garage following my sliding into a kerb last week. Then it was time for a bit of an operation.
For we needed to capture the Cayugas and move them into one of the goose stables for the day. The reason? Well, Sue suggested that before sending them off to the poulterer's we should try to sell them. So I speculatively put out an advert and, so far, I have had three enquiries and today four lucky Cayuga ducks headed off to new homes, blissfully ignorant of the fact that they have just escaped death row. The £60 I received will make a welcome contribution to my poultry feed costs.

Plucked (not literally) from death row.
The Cayuga girls take temporary residence in
the goose stable, waiting to meet their new owners.

But, even better, the first buyer's ears pricked up when I told him that our rabbits were a bit of a nuisance, for it turns out he is a skilled marksman looking for somewhere to hunt. He will be more than happy to dispose of a few little bunnies for me and even to gut and prepare them for us. Result! I was able to reciprocate by informing him of a more local straw supplier charging half the price he has been paying! The farm will be happy for the extra custom too. So everybody is happy. Just perfect.

Ducks demand recount

Can you spot the odd one out?

Think you've spotted it?
I'm afraid I'm not sure if I can help you. I think it's the bottom middle but, on closer inspection, there may even be two odd ones out! I couldn't even tell in the flesh, let alone from a photo.

So you'll imagine my surprise when the penny finally dropped. Eight of these are not what I thought they were.

Let's take a step back a week:
January's nearing its end and the chickens are laying more and more eggs every day. The Crested Cream Legbars, which lay beautiful blue eggs, have been laying very well of late. That's to put it mildly, for I am beginning to suspect that two hens are somehow conspiring to lay more than two eggs per day! I'm not quite sure, for I collect eggs several times a day and don't always remember what I've collected. Furthermore the morning eggs could, in theory, have been laid late the previous day. All other possibilities seem impossible though. The other hens do not lay blue eggs. The young Cream Legbar hen is still a chick and could not feasibly be laying eggs yet. And it is pretty unlikely that Spike the Cockerel has started to lay!

Now fast forward to yesterday:
This morning I found a blue egg lying all on its own in the mud. This is very unusual behaviour from one of the Cream Legbar hens.

Yesterday afternoon:
I collected another three blue eggs. Something is clearly up.

Then I realised. I can't believe I have been so short-sighted. Ducks! Not the three white ducks, who lay white eggs, but the black Cayugas... who lay blue eggs. Or, more precisely, the young Cayugas, the ones who are due to be going off to the poultry house in the sky round about February half term.

Once I'd realised, it all fell into place. For Cayuga eggs have a strange, dark film on them, a bit like dirtied eggs but it won't quite wash off. They're a subtly different shape to hen eggs and usually much larger. I guess it was because they are being laid by ducks just coming into lay that had me fooled, for the size difference is not yet marked.

So it appears that Chickens 8, Ducks 1 may well have been wrong. It was probably Chickens 6, Ducks 3. That's actually more eggs per duck than per hen.

A duck lost, a duckling born

So where to start with the updates?

Well, let's start with the sad news. We lost one of our Cayugas. It was while one of the girls was sitting on eggs under the old pea plants and we sort of assumed this one had sneaked off somewhere too, maybe in the dyke. But Sue was getting worried as this duck was not even returning for food in the morning or evening. Then one day I was over in the goose paddock investigating a wasps nest when I noticed something in the goose bath. You've guessed, it was our poor duck, long gone. It must have happened on the one night when we were away for the evening, otherwise we'd surely have heard her struggling and quacking to get out.

But, on the plus side, the sitting duck did, against our expectations, manage to hatch one duckling. This little creature is hilarious. For, as protective as she is of it, mummy duck does not wait around for her fluffy little offspring.

Instead, the poor duckling spends most of the day running as fast as it can through the long grass, those clockwork legs doing their best to keep up. Despite its constant extreme exercise regime, our new duckling is growing, though nowhere near as fast as those that Elvis recently reared.

These are now virtually indistinguishable from the adults and will be going into the freezer after Christmas, so I've been making sure that Sue doesn't get too attached to them!


Not so long ago these were cute, fluffy ducklings.
Now they look good enough to eat!

Elvis has already long moved on and is now sitting tight again on anybody's eggs she can find. So Sue has put some Cream Legbar eggs under her. A big softy is Sue.

Despite our attempts to stop them, I recently found Lady Guinea sitting amongst a patch of thistles, incubating quite a clutch of eggs. I've decided to leave be, but it will be a miracle if any survive till next Spring. For starters, it seems to be another of those communal nests where no bird is quite sure which eggs she's responsible for. It's late in the year too, so if any do hatch they'll have an uphill struggle against the elements. Guineafowl chicks are particularly susceptible to cold, wet conditions. The long grass won't do them any favours.

Duck update

Have you noticed how youngsters seem to grow taller than their parents these days?

The last duck update was when one of our Cayugas disappeared, only to be found sitting on eggs under the abandoned pea crop.

A recycled photo, but I can tell you she's still sitting.

Prior to that, you may recall that Elvis, our broody hen, hatched out six beautiful baby ducks from the eight eggs we'd placed under her.

Taken when they were still cute.

And just before that we took on three white ducks which a fellow smallholder no longer wanted to keep.

A new home, away from Randy

So, first an update on our three white ducks (we really should name them as they are not for the pot). When they arrived we put them in the veg plot along with the four black Cayugas. But our drake Cayuga, who needs a name himself (Randy may be appropriate!), just would not leave them alone. To be honest, they wondered what had hit them. So we moved them in with the chickens and left Randy quacking loudly on the other side of the fence.



A little grubby, but on the mend.
You can still  see the infected eye on the closest bird,
but it is now completely healed.
 

Unfortunately, one of them very soon developed a badly infected eye, completely closed over and encrusted. Another one showed signs of infection too. We felt terrible, and the reason I've not written about this yet is that we didn't want to worry their previous owner. We read up and Sue discovered that it could even be due to Randy's spit getting into their eye when he was jumping on them! I'm sure that stress didn't help either.

So a quick phone call to Norfolk Farm Vets and a pot of medicine was duly on its way by special courier. For the next five days the ducks' water, which they get through at an astonishing rate, was laced with said medicine. After just a couple of days there was a noticeable improvement and by the end of five days the ducks were, thankfully, back to full health.
We have kept them in their own special corner of the chicken pen and they seem very happy indeed.


Onto those newly hatched ducklings and boy, how they have grown! Poor Elvis doesn't know what she's hatched. Never before have her chicks shown such a liking for water! And never before have they grown so big and so fast. She has effectively been cuckooed.

The ducklings are now out and about in the chicken pen and are pretty much able to look after themselves, wandering around in a little gang making also sorts of squeaking and quacking noises. Elvis stays in touch and fought off a couple of the other hens in the first two days, but it is the gang of ducklings that lead her and not vice versa.






As most of the vegetables are now big enough to withstand a little chicken scratching, I've opened the door to the chicken pen again so the chickens are free to wander. They've got plenty of space anyway, so often don't bother to go wandering. However, yesterday Elvis led the duckling gang (or vice versa) out of the gate and into the big wide world. But no-one had accounted for Randy. He was straight over the rabbit fence which surrounds the veg patch (this is basically a flightless duck we are talking about here) and attempting to jump on the poor ducklings, his own offspring, though he probably didn't realise that. Not that it would have stopped him.

Sue hastily shooed him away and ushered Elvis and the gang back down the land.

So that's it for duck news at the moment, until the next lot hatch in amongst the pea plants. Then we'll potentially have gone from four to nineteen ducks in a matter of months.

Now I know they're cute, but we're currently researching at what age we can begin to eat them!
Sorry! But they're not pets.

 

 

Sitting Duck

Mystery solved.

After a slightly worrying night, we headed down to release the ducks from their house and duck number four just appeared, having been out and about all night.

Not much later Sue relocated her quietly sitting on a clutch of eggs under the abandoned pea crop.

So in a matter of weeks we've gone from sharing the farm with four black ducks to now having an extra three white ducks, six ducklings in the capable hands of Elvis and a clutch of goodness knows how many under this girl.
At the moment our ducks are more productive than our chickens - I'm talking eggs - but any young born this year will be strictly for meat. Shhhhhhh. Don't tell Elvis or this mum to be.

So, that was the exciting news for the day, but there was a shock in store too. Today was mowing day and every time I get the mower out I seem to suffer some sort of mishap, usually another piece of the mower failing dismally or falling to pieces.
But today I managed to sever an armoured electricity cable which someone had considerately laid far too close to the surface. As I jammed my arm under the blade mechanism trying to work out the degree of entanglement, yes, you've guessed, I got a rather nasty shock. For the initial severing had tripped the electricity in the house, but Sue had helpfully flicked the switch back up, so returning electricity supply to the bare cable which I was endeavouring to unwind from the mower blades!

I lived to tell the tale, as did the mower. The cable was not needed anyway

There's been a change of landscape today too. Those neat lines created by the combine yesterday were today transformed into a strange landscape of giant straw boxes.

View from my bedroom window.

They'll probably be gone again tomorrow and it won't be very long at all until the field is ploughed (I get to scan through thousands of Black-headed Gulls and Common Gulls in a vain search for something rarer), tilled and sown with the next crop.

Tomorrow's plan is to tart up the veg plot in readiness for our visitors this weekend. The potatoes need topping and the onion stems are lying down so they are ready for uprooting and drying.
What actually happens tomorrow, though, could very well be different. You never quite know.