Sunday, May 01, 2005

Meet the ducks

I suppose I had best introduce the senior duck patrol. Unlike the hens which save Dinosaur lack personality. The ducks ooze personality.
Our first acquisitions were Bill and Hilary. It was about the time of Monica saga and it seemed somehow appropriate. Hill (all white Jemima puddle duck)turned out to be the boss, and Bill (chocolate brown with a white bib and now white head) goes quacking along. Bill turned out to be a duck rather than a drake, thus proving a friend of ours has no idea about sexing ducks.
After we had had had them for about a week, they disappeared. But we still wanted ducks. Thus I was dispatched to the poultry auction and proudly purchased three fawn Indian Runners. I returned in triumph only to discover in my absence, Bill and Hill had returned for pastures unknown. We then had 5 ducks. The Indian Runners were named George, Martha and Abigail, but I kept mixing Abigail and Martha up. One of the female Runners died and then a fox got George who had been a lame duck for awhile.
We then got Clive and the East India Company (Indigo and Sophia). Clive is bottle green with a curly tail and an exceptionally loud quack, He also have the penchant for mating. The surving female Runner took afront of this and he chased her round and round. My husband started calling him --Roger the rapist. Sigh...But now I have the younger two looking at the ducks, and saying nonchantlantly -- oh, it's okay, it's just Clive mating.
A fox got Indigo last summer and so Sophia aka the Good Mother was the one who hatched the ducklings.
They all help ensure that the garden is kept clear of slugs and snails. Their eggs are quite good for baking BUT they are a bit rich for boiled or scrambled.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do the duck eggs have those beautifulpale bluey/green shells? When I was a child living on Exmoor the next door farmer's wife kept ducks and we used to get a supply from her. The yolks were deep orange and I loved them boiled. I didn't find them too rich, but then I'm an egg lover. If I lived alone almost every meal would be eggs of some kind.

Pam

Michelle Styles said...

Duck eggs can either be white or pale bluey green. They have clear egg whites and rather larger yolks than hen's eggs. As our hens are free ranging over the garden and eat plenty of bugs etc as well, their yolks and the ducks are a deep orangey yellow. I read once that Michelangelo used to use country egg yolks to produce the deepest yellow.
As we keep both hens and ducks, we tend use the hens eggs for boiling etc and the ducks for baking.
I too love eggs.