Backyard Expansion

We've been hard at work expanding the duckies' territory. We've enlarged "their" yard and are in the process of training them to stay close by in "our" yard.

Butry posing for the camera with her Khaki Campbell flock behind her and the "little ones" exploring beyond.

(Read more after the jump)

Can you believe how big these ones got?  They're already a month old and getting their second set of feathers. The Magpie ducks are not nearly as soft as the Campbells were, but they are very pretty. It's cute the way they still stick together even though we've "integrated" them into the rest of the flock.

Huge! And capable of foraging on their own.

It turns out our conservative approach to sexing the ducks means that we have a few more males than we butchered. Let's just say it's easier to determine a duck is a male (drake) than to determine for sure that it's a female (duck). Read: Looking for the presence of something is easier than determining its absence. In our case, our flock orginally had 4 girls (including the late Jerome) and 9 boys. As you can imagine, this balance is not traditionally found in nature. Given that these ducks are prized for their egg-laying abilities, we're more than a little skepticle that the "straight run" of mixed sex ducklings was actually a known mix of males and females with a higher proportion of males. Oh well, I guess. Now, we've got 3 females, 3 males, and Edgar (formerly known as blind and/or brave duck), who is technically male but so neurotic that he is hardly considered a bird by the rest of the flock. We'll have to slaughter 2 males to keep good ratios.

Hunting & Stretching. Two primary duck occupations.

If you are keeping up with my math, you'll know that we have 5 female ducks (3 khaki campbells, plus the 2 Pekins, Alice and Butry) and 5 hopefully female ducks (Magpies), making 10 egg-layers at best. Expecting the worse (lots of male Magpies) and knowing our egg consumption (incalculably high), we've also got an order of 5 Golden 300 females (and 1 Golden 300 male) coming on Wednesday. Yes, pictures will be coming.

This first spring has blossomed into a beautiful summer. I can hardly wait for next year when we have our own babies and we don't have to depend on the post office to deliver our bundles of joy.

In case you need clarification, that was all in reference to duck babies, not human bundles of joy. There's still no ETA on those ones. Sorry guys.