As always in this world, there are good things that happen, and bad things. I had two Muscovy hens sitting on eggs…but only one hen managed to hatch out her babies. My black hen, Tabitha, did hatch one successfully, but I found it dead in the far corner of her broody pen the following morning. It didn’t look injured or malformed, it just looked like it got out of the nest and died of cold. I suspect she threw it out, not recognizing the baby as hers? This is the second time she’s failed to hatch eggs, so I may not let her try again next year. We’ll see.
But the other wannabe mama, Tilda, is going great! she hatched nine ducklings, and they are just the cutest things, ever.
That is a just-hatched duckling…not even completely dried off.
She is super happy with herself, and super concerned I’m going to steal her babies. She’s my skittish hen, never very friendly, which is unfortunate, since all I want to do is snuggle ducklings.
A few days after they hatched, I let her take them out into the duck run, and one of the babies just…disappeared. I looked everywhere for signs of what happened, but there was nothing. I suspect the little hawk that lives in the field behind my house got it. So then I had to keep them confided in a more secure area for a few weeks until they were less vulnerable.
And the ducks are doing the job I hoped they would! Bindweed control! My entire garden is infested with bindweed, to the point where gardening is very frustrating. If I don’t pull it continually, it literally devours everything.
But I started noticing something…the bindweed is dying! Where it was grown up through a rose bush, it was all brown and dead! One area of the fence that I had pretty much given up on, was suddenly bare.
THAT, friends, used to be a solid wall of bindweed! Now it’s just…gone…except for some brown and dead leaves the ducks can’t reach.
And the fence along my chicken run, used to be overgrown, too.
But it’s not all the muscovy ducks’ work. Goosie has been working too. She’s getting everything on her side of the fence. And she’s been picking at the dead stems of bindweed wrapped through the wire, too, cleaning it up. If I had known this was possible, I’d have gotten muscovies and a goose thirty years ago!
Of course, having ducks free ranging through my garden does have a few negative points. They have trampled down a few plants I’d rather they didn’t…but I can put wire around those. They would eat my veggies…but I fenced them out of the veggie area. And they made a mess of the container water gardens I had. So I moved one to a non-duck area and converted the other to a bog garden.
This used to be filled with water; now it’s filled with a mix of peat moss and sand. It holds the water and keeps the plants happy, but isn’t attractive to the ducks. It’s all about the compromise! And I’m happy with a few squashed plants and nibbled leaves if it means the bindweed is being controlled.
And finally, I have enough elderberries on my oldest tree to start preserving a few. I dehydrated them, and will use them to make elderberry tea this cold and flu season.
The Muscovy ducklings are here! I thought it would be another two weeks or so, but a local breeder I had given up hearing from, finally messaged me to say she had pied ducklings available. We met halfway between our cities, and she handed off a small box of absolute sweetness. Seven ducklings.
I’m used to ducklings being relatively loud. Not these guys. They were almost perfectly silent all the way home. They hatched earlier that day, so the first thing we did was clip a tiny bit off the end of their right wings. Clipping one wing like this is called pinioning, and while it’s a major surgery requiring a vet on older birds, day-old ducklings’ bones are super soft, and although a couple of them bled a small amount, they didn’t even seem to notice anything had happened. I live on a small property, and Muscovy ducks are well-known for their ability to fly onto your roof – or your neighbor’s roof! For their own safety, I pinioned them to prevent them from being able to fly.
I don’t know if this is a Muscovy trait, but these ducklings are inseparable. And they seem to know if one is missing. I moved them outside onto grass yesterday when it was sunny, and because I carried them two by two, I had to leave one solo in the brooder until the last trip. The six outside called loudly for him until I brought him out!
They are super cute. And I think I have three different colors. Black and white, chocolate and white, and possibly blue/lavender and white? Below is the darkest, compared to the lightest.
Muscovys are perching ducks, which means they have feet with claws, for gripping. Their little feet actually curl around my fingers! And those claws are already sharp.
The garden is growing really well. This is probably my favorite time of year among the ornamentals. Notice the new greenhouse – still a work in progress, but slowly getting built. Everything in it should grow extremely well, after I made a blood sacrifice Monday while working on it. Yes, my knife slipped, and I made a nasty cut on my knuckle. I could probably have gotten a stitch or two, but since I don’t care about scarring, I didn’t bother going in. It’s healing nicely, but it’s awkward working outside without the use of my left forefinger! Not to mention typing.
I’m hoping we get the greenhouse finished soon, because I have three cold frames and some indoor growlights bursting at the seams with little tomatoes, squashes, and melons! The melons and a few of the tomatoes will go into the greenhouse and stay there; the rest just need a bigger place to grow while they wait for warmer weather.
My potatoes-in-trash-cans are growing nicely.
And I have itty bitty apples on the columnar trees I planted. First apples! Squee!
The grapes have TONS of fruit on them. It’s going to be a bumper year. I just put the vines in last year, so this is the first year for fruit.
The strawberries are also going to town, setting fruit. Especially the alpines.
Something new I just started is growing duckweed. All you need is water and sun, and it reproduces like mad. It’s terrifically good for ducks – and other poultry. I want to add it regularly to the duck pond once it gets going, and also skim some off for the quail.
The bees are so cool. I love sitting right next to the hive and watching them going about their business. They fly around me and investigate me, but are not aggressive at all. I try to spend a few minutes with them every day. They say bees can recognize humans, and I’m trying to make them realize that I mean them no harm.
And the ducklings are beside themselves with excitement!
They have officially moved outside into their Big Duck pen! I still have their Ecoglow Brooder out with them for a heat source, but they didn’t even get under it once all day.
They are such sweet little girls.
And tomorrow we are picking up Josie’s new babies at the feed store. She’s been very patiently waiting for them, growling whenever I disturb her in the nestbox.
I’ll try to get a video of the moment of first introduction. It’s such a magic moment.
First off, the Indian Runner ducklings, Maisie and Millie, are now a week old. Ducks grow so freaking fast!
We’ve been letting them out to run and play in the living room, and today, because the weather was so lovely and warm, they got to go outside and have a bath.
While I was outside with the camera, I also took a few pictures of the quail.
A gratuitous shot of Peabody because he is a camera hog:
And then I visitied Loki and Isis. When I open the door to the coop, Isis always comes running right up, expecting treats.
If I don’t immediately comply with a handful of seed or greens, she sometimes attempts to walk (always very calmly) out of the coop to go get her own greens.
It’s at this point that I give in to her wishes…
I really, really like these Golden Italians. They are so docile and sweet-tempered. Though Loki is always slightly suspicious of my motives. He’s a good male, and protective of his girl.
Speaking of quail, I said I’d show you pics of my new coop. It’s smaller than the others – I originally meant it to hook onto the from-scratch greenhouse I was going to build. I wanted to make sure they had an outside area they could escape to if the interior of the greenhouse got too hot.
The entire top lifts, for easy access to the quail. I wouldn’t have a top *quite* like this, if I didn’t trust my quail to be so tame they wouldn’t fly out. As it is, one of the girls does *pretend* she’s going to fly out if I’m not quick enough with the treats. But once I drop seed or greens in the pen, they all let me pet them, clean around them, and do whatever else needs to be done without fear.
Notice the chickens looking on. They have severe quail-food envy. The highlight of their day is when I scatter a few quail crumbles on the ground for them!
We aren’t doing a from-scratch greenhouse any more, for a variety of reasons. The biggest one being that we found a kit that is everything we want, for a reasonable price. It’s the Early Bloomer, by Solexx. We have the frame up, but we were accidentally sent the wrong size of anchoring/tie down pieces, so we can’t put the skin on it until we get those in the mail.
The company, Solexx is AMAZING to deal with. They are willing to answer all our questions over the phone, and after we bought one, the guy who gives help on building it gave us his personal cell phone number in case we had trouble and needed help after hours or on the weekend! Wow. That’s customer service you don’t often see.
If you’re looking for a greenhouse, I highly recommend checking them out.
And what’s new in the garden? My beans are coming up like wildfire!
I’m growing so many different kinds of snap beans this year. I want to can millions of them! Seriously, those beans I canned last year are so yummy. I’m also growing a couple of varieties for dry beans. Black Turtle and Saxons, neither of which I’ve done before, and Scarlet Runner Beans, which I do every year. The hummingbirds LOVE the flowers, they are gorgeous on the trellis, and the dry beans are wonderful. Similar to a pinto, I think, only creamier. Since I tried them as dry beans, I don’t bother picking any of them as young snap beans.
And here’s a picture of one of my favorite flowers, Forget-Me-Not.
Oh, and I almost forgot – we’re getting three new chicks this year! My broody hen, Josie, went broody at just the right time this year, so I reserved two Ameraucanas, and one Speckled Sussex. Every time I get an Ameraucana, it ends up being a rooster. Every. Freaking. Time. So this time, I’m getting two. My luck couldn’t be that bad, could it?
Friday was an eventful day. Not only did we pick up our three sexed Fawn and White Indian Runner ducklings, but we got the call that our package of honeybees was also ready!
First there was some bad news though – one of the first things I always do in the morning is check email and facebook. One of the very first things to pop up on facebook was a story about a horrible accident on the nearby freeway involving a semi tipping over while delivering Belleville Bees. I ordered my bees through Belleville, and I was so sure that this accident was involving the delivery of the package bees! Would I be getting bees at all this year? It was a moment of great disappointment, as I’d been looking forward to having bees again for nearly a year.
It was quickly obvious, though, that these were hives being delivered to pollinate a field. What a horrible, horrible accident. I heard there were 3.7 million honeybees on that semi, and while beekeepers were able to rescue some, many more were either crushed in the accident, or killed on purpose by the firefighters spraying foam.
Our package was fine, though, and was SO MUCH MORE HEALTHY than the package we bought last year, which arrived with a dead queen and more than an inch of dead bees on the bottom of the box. This one had only a few dead bees.
Last time, we got Italians. This time, we were swayed into getting New World Carniolans by a local beekeeper, who thinks they are the best for my area.
Hiving a new package of bees is an exhilarating experience! Even though you are literally touching bees, having them crawl on you, and buzzing all around you, it never feels frightening. It’s just one of the most awesome, incredible feelings! Neither one of us were stung, and even though we were just wearing jackets with veils and rubber dish-washing gloves rather than a full suit, we never felt like we were in danger of being stung. It’s just so, so cool.
Our hive is a Warre hive, and one of the nice things about this particular one (made by Sweet Valley Hives) is the queen release ring system they have. Instead of hanging the queen cage down inside the hive, you just slot it into the side of the hive. In this picture, you can see the bees crawling around this slot, checking things out. The white tab you see is part of the queen cage – it’s the hanging strip.
When it’s time to see if the worker bees have accepted her and freed her from the cage, it’s as simple as pulling the cage out of the side and looking! Today, I did just this – not wearing any protection at all, not even gloves – and the queen has been freed!
The bees have already also made a large section of comb, and today I saw about five bees coming into the hive with pollen. Unlike last year, I think this lot of bees are off to a great start.
I made a quick little video right after we hived the package of bees. The audio isn’t very good, but you can see all the bees flying around us.
After we picked up the bees, we went to Valley Farm Center for the ducklings. They are one of the few places that offer special orders of breeds, and also sexed ducklings.
Sadly, the ducklings must have been exposed to something nasty, because just a couple hours after we brought them home, one of them started having trouble walking and was staggering around. Within another hour, she died in my hand as I was holding her. Mom did some googling, and found out that the symptoms and rapid onset and death matched exactly Duck Viral Hepatitis, which is highly contageous among waterfowl, and has a 90% mortality rate. I called Valley Farm Center, and learned some of the other ducklings that came in with ours were sick/dying. Terrifed we were going to lose all three, I sterilized the brooder box, and everything in it. I don’t know if that did the trick, but it’s now past the 48 hour incubation time for DVH, and the other two ducklings are in perfect health. I think they are going to be ok. Whew.
We named them Millie and Maisie. Maisie (surprise, surprise!) turned out to be a crested Indian Runner. I’m happy about that, because I love crested ducks! You can just see her little topknot in this pic:
They are both so cute. I really think there is nothing on earth more adorable than a duckling!
Look! Here is Millie asleep in my hand!
In garden news, we finally demolished the falling-down, rotting shed in the chicken yard. I should have gotten pictures of its decrepid state, but I forgot. Here’s a picture of the new space I have to work with. I’m still planning what to do, but I think it will involve another grape trellis.
There beyond the make-shift fence, is the bee yard.
I planted some pasture mix beyond the hive, which is starting to green out now. When it’s more mature, I’ll let the chickens in for a short time every few days to get some green forage in them. The trash cans are my container potatoes, the bed at the bottom is seeded with millet for the quail, and there’s comfry, kale, and blackberries as well.
All of the fruiting trees and vines are doing REALLY well. The hardy kiwis are covered in buds, which is so exciting.
The fuzzy kiwi is growing well, but because we only planted it last year, I don’t think we’re going to get fruit. The fuzzy green-and-red leaves are beautiful, though. It still kind of blows my mind that growing kiwi is even possible here in the Pacific NW. It just seems like such a tropical fruit.
Also fun is the “Tiny Tim” tomatoes I have growing in the kitchen window. This is a mini variety that does well in lower light, and only gets about a foot high. We have little green tomatoes already!
Oh, and do you remember when I said we weren’t getting a greenhouse this year? Yeah, I need to stop saying things like that. A while back, I said I’d built my last quail coop…since then, I’ve built another. A little one just for the extra girls. I need to get pictures up for you.
And now, after I said no greenhouse…we’re building one. From a kit, though, not from scratch. Mom found this company called Solexx, and their product sounds perfect for us. The kit is arriving tomorrow, so this weekend, we’ll be putting it together. I have all kinds of little melons and tomatoes started just to put in it!
I just placed the order for my ducklings! Fortunately, my local feed store (Valley Farm Center) allows you to order sexed ducks for a small added fee. I’m going for three fawn and white Indian Runner females.
Besides being incredibly cute and funny to watch, Indian Runners are my favorite ducks to free-range in the garden. Because they are so skinny and upright, they don’t squash plants the way other breeds do, and they are top of the line foragers for slugs. They also lay more than 200 eggs a year, each. When I had ducks before, I never really ate the eggs, because they were almost entirely free-range, and they hid their nests. By the time I figured out where they were laying, the nests were filled with dozens of incredibly dirty eggs. Not exactly appetizing! This time, they will be penned at night and in the morning, so according to the experts, they should lay before they are released out into the garden. Duck eggs are supposedly better to bake with, and better tasting than chicken eggs. I look forward to finding out for myself whether this is true. My ducklings will be arriving on April 17th. So now I have a deadline to finish the coop!
The white male quail, Peabody, was thisclose to being culled…but then I took pity on him – again – and decided to give him one final chance to get his act together. I got to thinking that part of his problem with his females is that he might just be a one-girl boy. When he had three females in with him, he picked on one of the girls. When he was just with Mama quail, they were getting along great, until she died.
So I gave him just one female, and so far, so good. He’s thrilled to have her, and is doing the adorable quail courting dance for her. I won’t be breeding from him, though – nor will I be raising any more Texas A&M quail. They seem to be much more aggressive and difficult in a colony. The calmest and sweetest ones I have are the Golden Italians. When I eventually get down to just one variety, that’s the one I’ll be sticking with.
Speaking of the quail, some friends and I will be doing a program on keeping quail, chickens, and ducks in your backyard. If you’re in the area, it will be at the Mount Vernon City Library on February 9th. I think at 6:30pm. I’ll be bringing in some actual live quail…probably Loki and a couple of his girls.
While I was looking for a cute chicken video yesterday, I got side-tracked into watching cute duckling videos. It doesn’t take much to distract me with ducklings! Chicks are sweet, but ducklings make me hurt inside, they’re so adorable. Seriously, ducks are the things I love most in this world.
So on to the videos!
I miss being followed by ducklings….
I miss watching them play in a tub of water. When they get overexcited, they jump out of the tub and go racing around in circles, splattering water everywhere! So funny!
I miss watching them play with my dog. Her best friend was a tan & white Indian Runner duck….
Most of all, I miss just holding them and watching them trust me enough to fall asleep in my hand.
In case you can’t tell, once the chickens are grown up and settled in, we’re also getting ducks. Ducks are the greatest slug control a garden could ever have! I can’t find a video to illustrate it, but my duck Bastien used to take walks with me in my garden. He’d stroll beside me like the old friend he was, chatting away about the plants and the slugs. Occasionally, his wife would get jealous of his attention to me, and call him back to her. He’d wait until she was distracted, then sneak away to finish our garden inspection tour.
This is my favorite Christmas charity, and certainly the most fun. The idea is, you take a shoebox (or a shoebox-size plastic box), and pack it with toys, school, supplies, and other personal items that a child wants and needs. Two weeks from today, you drop your boxes off at your local drop-off point, and they are collected and shipped around the world to children in other countries that have been devastated by poverty, war, or natural disasters. Imagine the joy these shoeboxes will give to children who have lost their home, or to children who perhaps have never received a gift in their entire lives!
Millions and millions of these shoeboxes are shipped out every year, and it is such an opportunity to show suffering children throughout the world that people do care for them, in very personal ways.
The same charity, Samaritan’s Purse, also gives you the opportunity to benefit children and families in lots of other ways, including gifting livestock. This year, in addition to my shoeboxes, I’m sending a donation to buy a family a dozen baby ducklings!
Out of Eden 