We added to the ranch Billys Idea

Hey all, Billy and I have added to our ranch.. Today it was 4 ducks, 3 females and one male. with more coming tomorrow. we will have a total of 9 when we are done.

Then we are getting 2 turkeys

Pictures are coming..

Good deal.. the more the merrier!

Exciting!

Well, at least you're no longer a 'chicken ranch'... tee-hee.
Yer just gettin' totally feather-brained! Yeah! Billy's going to love the turkeys when they get big enough to hug!

LOL Jayryunen never thought of it that way..... We are getting an older tom and a younger hen, the turkey is big already. We picked up two more ducks today, and Billy ave up his pool so they could swim somewhere... IT was too cute. So I let him play in the mud puddle that the rain had left us outside the pen when the duck were swimming.. So we were muddy... He had a blast.. We got a bad storm earlier today and the ranch is a mess. I know what I will be doing tomorrow.

Woohoo! Way to go. I just love our ducks, they are so funny to watch. I love watching them swim.

I only have 1 duck now. An Aracona hen I call Miss Quackers. She is a pretty girl. We always fed the wild ducks in the creek behind our old house. We stopped in the parking lot at the old house when we were there a couple of days ago and about 30 ducks came running up when they heard the old diesel engine. It was sad.

Glad Billy has some new friends. It's great when a kid loves animals.

He visited his turkeys today, we have to put a roof on the pen so they will not fly out. Got the chicken wire today, it should be done tomorrow...LOL he likes the turkeys and fed them and named them Auntie A and Uncle J after the people that are giving them to him...lolol

A very honorable gesture.

When do ducks lay eggs, and how many do they lay a year?? Just wondering...

PS I just love to clean out the pool and watch them play in the clean pool, they fly up and dive bomb..It looks like little kids enjoying the pool....

This message was edited Sep 15, 2009 6:55 PM

Ducks mature earlier than chickens and can out- lay them too.

And this clean pool - how long does that last?

Maybe if I am lucky, three days.. I dont pay for water, I am on well... So I figure I can give them fresh water every three days... I have not gotten any duck eggs yet... that is why I am asking, should I be looking for them?

MissJ - my ducks seemed to start laying around 5 months of age, and they do lay frequently. Big white eggs. The shells feel almost waxy to me. If you handed me a big chicken egg and a duck egg, I could tell the difference blindfolded. There is that much difference in the texture of the shell surface. The "whites" inside are also much clearer than the chicken egg "whites." If you had them side by side in a bowl, it makes the chicken egg "white" look yellowish. The duck egg white is almost completely clear. They are really nice flavourful eggs and great for baking too.

Ours tended to lay all over the place at the start - not in a selected spot. Some of them even laid eggs in the water. Weird huh? They put them on the grass, in the barnyard (ick), on top of a roll of fencing, some in the coop, some in the barn, all over the place. As if they didn't know where to put them. Over time, they mostly now lay them in my flower beds. So nice of them.

I made a nest for my duck hen by filling the center of an old tire with hay. She took right to it. My duck's eggs are almost all yolk. Great eggs.

Do they lay all all year round? or just certain times of the year? I have a lean to of sorts in there, 3 sided looks like an a frame house, that I want to fill with hay so if there is bad weather, they can get out of it.. I have not seen them go in there, they mostly gather in the far corner whick got me thinking I could cover the corner on the top and then lay some sort of frame for a box and fill with hey.

Will molded hay hurt them? due to a bad storm we had, I lost about a bale of hay, although it is not completly molded, it is spotty, I wont feed it to my horses.