AAAAND more adventures… gripes and admissions.
These beautiful Muscovy ladies are our new ducks, about 3 months old and already I am questioning the idea of duck keeping. I got them when they were already two months old, skittish, and have been feeding them by had every day. I have given up on trying to hold them. It seems too stressful for them so I really don’t like it.
I think they are beautiful but good lord do they stink! Their pond which really needs to be cleaned out every couple of days… smells like a rotten Thanksgiving Turkey carcass. Haha. Seriously. Its enough to gag a maggot.
They have learned to fly as well and are soaring from one end of their enclosure to the other, making water landings in the kiddie pool.. Its very cute. My intention on getting them was that they would be able to free range with the chickens over our 2 acres and would have their wings clipped. The reality is that the dogs are WAY too interested in them. Hex sits outside their pen whining and drooling, literally, like they were two little hamburgers just out of reach. I love my dogs and they are very well behaved but I just do not trust them with these ducks. Even Stinky, the 12 year old Pit Bull is interested in them in an unhealthy way. They cannot free range with 4 potential predators penned in with them. I don’t really know why they are ok with the chickens and not the ducks, but I am not taking any chances.
The ducks love to eat greens from the garden and I have even suspended cabbages and lettuces from chains for them to nibble and play with! I learned that trick on the Portland Tour de Coop… an awesome way to meet other urban chicken keepers and trade secrets. One of the coops was so Utopian… it had quails, ducks, chickens and pheasants living happily in an enormous and fun looking pen… That was the idea here. Its not really working out that way. Now we have 2 new chickens that won’t play nice with the original 4, and 4 fat stubborn ladies that won’t sleep in the new coop. So my dream of the happy little farm is more like the projects for a bunch of disgruntled fowl. Don’t get me wrong, they are spoiled and well fed and the chickens all get out and free range.. but its just not how I imagined it. So much more complicated, so smelly hahah. That’s the reality.
I am learning alot.
-Don’t put your coop near your house
-Chickens looking like crap and losing their feathers will usually recover
-chickens sneeze
-chickens, if they are unhappy with their laying boxes, will choose a new spot and hide their eggs … for us it was a woodpile and now the utility sink…
-ducks smell really bad and attract more predators
-muscovy ducks have claws and use them
yeeeeep…
Oh, the ladies. They are lucky they are cute.
(Source: autoentropy)
me drying off Aramis after a bath
This Coupe is built into a chicken coop, which makes it a Chicken Coop Coupe. “I’d rather be flying” (nice touch). The 1970 Morris Traveller named “Maurice” by its owner, was cut in half to make the chicken coop.
