Love a (Muscovy) Duck

Once we (thought we) had mastered the art of chicken management we were keen to expand our skills to other poultry types. So we bought ten Muscovy ducks and seven Pilgrim geese from a local farmer. I will talk about the geese later. Today I would like to share with you the joys (and drawbacks) of having ducks in your life.

We got ten young Muscovies and they moved in with the chickens. We soon discovered that they were great "sitters". They would be walking along and just drop onto their bellies and sit, like their legs suddenly stopped working. At first we were worried they had some kind of leg weakness but, as we have come to learn, all Muscovies like to sit- a lot. They have heavy bodies and like to take a load off. The drakes especially are big, heavy birds which seem to find walking a huge encumbrance, and really get a waddle on just to go from A to B. They do not like to run and you can in fact cause them leg injuries if they are forced to run. This is why you must never chase them to catch them. If you want to catch a Muscovy you must trap them suddenly and unexpectedly, or round them up slowly so they do not have to run.

They were happy in their new home and grew surprisingly quickly. Two weeks later they looked like this

 Three months later they looked like this!

They also ate a lot of food, compared to our chickens and even compared to the geese. This is why they grew so quickly. It was easy to imagine them in a casserole dish gently bubbling in a tasty Thai green sauce. The flip side of all this juicy growth is that they produce a lot of poo and one thing I came to realise quite quickly is that ducks are actually very dirty and smell, no matter how clean you keep your poultry house. Ducks will get into any water source and they will dirty it. They put sand and mud into the water from their beaks as they clean them. They climb into the water and drag mud in and then poo in the water for good measure. They spill the water out over the floor and any puddle that develops in the enclosure they will dig about in with their beaks until it becomes a little cesspool. They seem to enjoy nothing better than dunking their heads in and out of filthy water. The filthier the better, as a matter of fact. They also do strange things like putting objects such as bones, sticks, bits of plastic and other bits of rubbish in their water containers. I thought it might be because of a lack of minerals that they were doing this, but they were fed a complete duck food of extremely good quality, got household scraps and free ranged about the garden all day, so I would be very surprised if that was the case. As far as ducks' lives go they were living at the Hilton.

 We resigned ourselves to changing their water containers twice a day. We read that ducks and geese need to be able to dunk their heads in and out of water to clean their nostrils, so they actually have to have access to deep water containers, which are what become the problem. They cannot just be given nipple waterers, which stay clean. Ducks also really need to have access to water to clean themselves and to allow them to preen their feathers. If they don't have this water, their feathers end up looking frayed and bedraggled. They start to look like they have crawled out of a nuclear holocaust zone.  We ended up giving our ducks a children's wadding pool when it became obvious they were looking the worse for wear without one. Ducks also like to mate in the water, and this too became obvious once the pool arrived. The pool had to be emptied and refilled daily because it got extremely dirty and smelled terrible, even after just one day! The ducks loved it a bit too much, me thinks! It possibly did not help that the pool was filled with dam water (and we did read that using dam water was not ideal because of the possibility that it would be contaminated by wild birds who use the dam) but we did not have any scheme water and the rain water was need for human consumption, so dam water was what they got. In life you have to work with what you have, after all. So not only did we have the ducks spilling water everywhere, but we also had to empty out large containers of water onto ground that was, once the ducks destroyed all the vegetation in the enclosures, essentially just a clay pan. Oh dear Lord, the smell at times in winter could burn your eyeballs.

The ducks were out free ranging all day. They were not confined to their enclosure. We found it hard to believe that such small animals could make such a foul mess of things. Their enclosure was raked out every week during summer and once winter set in and it became a mud patch, it was shovelled out when it got very smelly, and completely shovelled out and had white sand piled on top of the clay after winter. All this (very hard) work with little result, or with brief and fleeting results.  The problem was not just the ducks. The poultry houses we inherited when we bought Morilla were built on a clay pan. Most of the land around the house was heavy clay soil, so it wasn't really the previous owners fault. They had to also work with what they had! However, this was the main cause of the angst- properly draining soil would have been a tremendous bonus. Oh how we came to envy people with sandy soil in their chook houses. 

No matter what we thought of the smell, the ducks did not seem to be disturbed by it and went on to mate and produce copious amounts of eggs , which they thankfully laid in spring and summer in the dry and mud free laying house. This is the first of the girls to sit on a clutch of eggs.

The first ducklings. She ended up having twelve- hatching all but two of the eggs she was sitting on.

This is what I call a logistical nightmare- having to watch after all these offspring!

We soon discovered why it is good to have chick wire on the bottom of your enclosures. These ducklings were in the geese enclosure and as we found out Goosey Loosey doesn't really like Ducky Lucky, no matter what Chicken Little may have told you. Mother duck was not able to help being trapped in the other pen. It was a good thing I was there taking photos of the birds (again) and managed to rescue them. We learned this lesson without any casualties! Hurrah for small wins like this.

This nesting site was a hot piece of real estate. As soon as the white duck was off it this black and white girl jumped on it. Notice the dishevelled feathers- a sign that the duck has been getting frequently 'treaded' (mated) by the males. It is called treading because that is exactly what happens- the male climbs onto the female's back and treads all over her for about five minutes until he gets his balance right and then mates.

The black and white girl and the white girl shared parenting duties with their two different aged batches of chicks. It was quite sweet really!

A grown duckling. Beautiful creature!

Donnie Darko.

 

The expanding family under a tree

We did eat a few of our muscovies. They are best eaten at 10 -12 weeks but we ate ours at about 6 months of age and they were therefore very tough and had a strong gamey flavour. We found it too hard to kill a duckling, regardless of the sweet tasty meat we imagined waited under the feathers. I like the gamey flavour of the muscovies as compared to the mallard type duck you buy in shops. However, what we need to do is casserole our older birds and not roast of fry them- they are well passed their 'best before' date after 3 months of age!

Muscovies are very entertaining birds to watch. The males are very heavy and cannot fly very high off the ground or very far. They do not quack but make a  variety of interesting hissing sounds and sometimes get a real quiver going in their throat and head while they do it. The males have a thick crest of feathers on top of their head which they raise whenever they are concerned about something. They look quite spectacular with this crest up and their bright red fleshy faces. The males do fight each other and they have very long sharp claws which can inflict quite a wound. You will need to keep the males' numbers low compared to the females to prevent fighting. We have found a ratio of 5 females to 1 male keeps everyone happy. The males are very docile and gentle around people- we have never been attacked by a Muscovy drake but I have been attacked by a rooster and a gander. Muscovies do not like to be picked up- they will try to scratch you to get away! I have a lovely scar on my hand from a Muscovy drake. I recommend you have good control of the drake's feet before you lift him off the ground. Also make sure his wings are secure- getting hit in the face by a wing can be quite painful, believe it or not! You actually can be knocked down with a feather- when it is attached to a frightened bird's wing.

The females are about half the size of the males and have less red flesh on their faces. They quack in varying tones depending on what they have to say. They also hiss if you get too near a nest or a duckling. These girls are good fliers and will land up in trees. They can nest in trees too, apparently, although none of ours ever did. It is recommended you clip one wing to keep them home, but we never did and we never had any fly off (that we know about anyway!). These birds seem to be real homebodies and form tight knit groups which stay together all day. You need to protect the females from the males, especially during breeding season. Keep male numbers low so the females are not damaged by excessive treading. Treading damages the females' feathers and they do get pulled out. Once the feathers are gone the female's back is exposed and the male's claws will cut it during mating. Never let your females get to this stage. Once the feathers are getting dishevelled, remove the males, or put one male in with several females and keep the other males separated. We separated the males from the females and only allowed the females we wanted to breed to be mated. These males which had no access to females very rarely fought amongst each other. They fight over the females mostly and seem to forget about sex when there are no females around.

The most amusing thing to watch is the head bobbing that these birds do amongst each other. They hiss in a repetitive "hah- hoo" way and their heads go backwards and forwards and up and down in a very odd manner. They can do this for ages. often wagging their tails as well. We had a drake catch his reflection in the window of the sliding door. He exhausted himself doing this ritual in front of his new found 'competition', with the added extra of the very exuberant rising and dropping of his crest. His face went scarlet red. It didn't matter how hard he tried, the other drake was his equal in every sense. I eventually had to shoo him off before he expended all his energy and rolled over and died. The next day he was back for round two. Males are universally the same, no matter what the species.