In article ,
(Mark) wrote:

"Anonny Moose" wrote in message
...
Congratulations! Ducks are pretty darn sloppy but cuter than all get out.
They eat a fair share of the bugs and spiders and slugs and fertilize the
area, to boot. How can you beat that?? Did you get them sexed or will it be
a surprise?

Karen


Well, it's going to be a surprise, I guess. I had wanted to make sure
I got all females, but the guy at the feed store couldn't guarantee
it. He didn't claim to know how to sex them beyond hearing somewhere
that the females have smaller heads than the males. (No sexist vibe,
either)

I figure that they'll be fun no matter what sex they are, but if we're
going to eat duck eggs, I'd really rather not crack one open to find a
fetal duck inside.

I'm all over the idea of having these guys around to keep the slug 'n'
bug population under control. My kids eat stuff straight out of the
garden, so I don't use pesticide...the closest I come is laying out a
bowl of beer to kill a handful of slugs each night.

Mark

With Pekins, when they mature, the males will be larger than the females
and have a different "voice". Females quack loudly, while drakes have a
whispery quack... Also, the males, at about 3 months, will have a "DA"
feather pair in their tail. A pair of curled feathers that are quite
obvious. This goes for mallards too, but they also have a different
color pattern. Since Pekins are solid white....... ;-)

Pekin drakes will also screw anything they can catch! Including
chickens. I had to give away the one I had due to this problem. He
harassed my bantam chickens. G

It's a duck thing.
K.

--
Sprout the Mung Bean to reply...

,,Cat's Haven Hobby Farm,,Katraatcenturyteldotnet,,
http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...user id=katra

I like the idea of duck eating slugs and other insect,but won't
they eat the vegetable and flowers??? I allways wanted to get some
muscovy but,I was afraid my garden would be devastated.
Philippe

Janice wrote:
: On 14 Mar 2004 21:50:43 -0800, (Mark) wrote:

:...that's all baby ducks do. That, and they spend inordinate amounts
:of time being cute as can be.
:
:I got 4 White Pekin ducklings yesterday. They're in a big box in the
:kitchen, and in 24 hours, they basically saturated their bedding with
:dribbled water (from their feeder) and duck poop. The upside is that
:they're generating lots of "organic material" for my compost bin.
:
:We built an enclosed pen off the side of the garden shed for them once
:the weather warms a bit and they're big enough to stay outside.
:Eventually, I'm going to enclose the garden and let the little rascals
:gorge to their hearts content on June bugs and slugs.
:
:Just thought I'd share.
:
:Mark

: watch out for the run off from the roof if that's a side of your shed
: with run off. I put some baby ducks that were just getting too big to
: be in the house, but not fledged, and it rained one day when I was
: gone to work, and even though I'd put plastic over the box.. and
: weighted it etc.. it got into the box and that equaled dead ducks..
: muscovy ducks.. which aren't *really* ducks, they're a south american
: waterfowl which do not have the oil glands that ducks do, so they can
: and do drown if they get into water and can't get out easily. They
: are funny so ugly they're cute and the don't quack!! So you can keep
: them without the entire neighborhood knowing they're there. They're
: prodigious producers of big eggs that aren't as pasty as duck eggs,
: the whites are more like chicken egg whites, and overall they're
: better than ducks. If you don't take them away from them, they will
: (provided there is a drake available) hatch out 10 to 15 eggs, as many
: as they can cover. If you're inclined to see them as livestock, not
: just pets, they're quite tasty.. tastes like beef!

: Otherwise if you gotta have ducks, india runner ducks or indian..
: stand bolt upright like a surprised regular duck. They look like
: animated bowling pins. ;-)

: Janice

I like the idea of duck eating slugs and other insect,but won't
they eat the vegetable and flowers??? I allways wanted to get some
muscovy but,I was afraid my garden would be devastated.
Philippe

Janice wrote:
: On 14 Mar 2004 21:50:43 -0800, (Mark) wrote:

:...that's all baby ducks do. That, and they spend inordinate amounts
:of time being cute as can be.
:
:I got 4 White Pekin ducklings yesterday. They're in a big box in the
:kitchen, and in 24 hours, they basically saturated their bedding with
:dribbled water (from their feeder) and duck poop. The upside is that
:they're generating lots of "organic material" for my compost bin.
:
:We built an enclosed pen off the side of the garden shed for them once
:the weather warms a bit and they're big enough to stay outside.
:Eventually, I'm going to enclose the garden and let the little rascals
:gorge to their hearts content on June bugs and slugs.
:
:Just thought I'd share.
:
:Mark

: watch out for the run off from the roof if that's a side of your shed
: with run off. I put some baby ducks that were just getting too big to
: be in the house, but not fledged, and it rained one day when I was
: gone to work, and even though I'd put plastic over the box.. and
: weighted it etc.. it got into the box and that equaled dead ducks..
: muscovy ducks.. which aren't *really* ducks, they're a south american
: waterfowl which do not have the oil glands that ducks do, so they can
: and do drown if they get into water and can't get out easily. They
: are funny so ugly they're cute and the don't quack!! So you can keep
: them without the entire neighborhood knowing they're there. They're
: prodigious producers of big eggs that aren't as pasty as duck eggs,
: the whites are more like chicken egg whites, and overall they're
: better than ducks. If you don't take them away from them, they will
: (provided there is a drake available) hatch out 10 to 15 eggs, as many
: as they can cover. If you're inclined to see them as livestock, not
: just pets, they're quite tasty.. tastes like beef!

: Otherwise if you gotta have ducks, india runner ducks or indian..
: stand bolt upright like a surprised regular duck. They look like
: animated bowling pins. ;-)

: Janice

I like the idea of duck eating slugs and other insect,but won't
they eat the vegetable and flowers??? I allways wanted to get some
muscovy but,I was afraid my garden would be devastated.
Philippe

Janice wrote:
: On 14 Mar 2004 21:50:43 -0800, (Mark) wrote:

:...that's all baby ducks do. That, and they spend inordinate amounts
:of time being cute as can be.
:
:I got 4 White Pekin ducklings yesterday. They're in a big box in the
:kitchen, and in 24 hours, they basically saturated their bedding with
:dribbled water (from their feeder) and duck poop. The upside is that
:they're generating lots of "organic material" for my compost bin.
:
:We built an enclosed pen off the side of the garden shed for them once
:the weather warms a bit and they're big enough to stay outside.
:Eventually, I'm going to enclose the garden and let the little rascals
:gorge to their hearts content on June bugs and slugs.
:
:Just thought I'd share.
:
:Mark

: watch out for the run off from the roof if that's a side of your shed
: with run off. I put some baby ducks that were just getting too big to
: be in the house, but not fledged, and it rained one day when I was
: gone to work, and even though I'd put plastic over the box.. and
: weighted it etc.. it got into the box and that equaled dead ducks..
: muscovy ducks.. which aren't *really* ducks, they're a south american
: waterfowl which do not have the oil glands that ducks do, so they can
: and do drown if they get into water and can't get out easily. They
: are funny so ugly they're cute and the don't quack!! So you can keep
: them without the entire neighborhood knowing they're there. They're
: prodigious producers of big eggs that aren't as pasty as duck eggs,
: the whites are more like chicken egg whites, and overall they're
: better than ducks. If you don't take them away from them, they will
: (provided there is a drake available) hatch out 10 to 15 eggs, as many
: as they can cover. If you're inclined to see them as livestock, not
: just pets, they're quite tasty.. tastes like beef!

: Otherwise if you gotta have ducks, india runner ducks or indian..
: stand bolt upright like a surprised regular duck. They look like
: animated bowling pins. ;-)

: Janice

I like the idea of duck eating slugs and other insect,but won't
they eat the vegetable and flowers??? I allways wanted to get some
muscovy but,I was afraid my garden would be devastated.
Philippe

Janice wrote:
: On 14 Mar 2004 21:50:43 -0800, (Mark) wrote:

:...that's all baby ducks do. That, and they spend inordinate amounts
:of time being cute as can be.
:
:I got 4 White Pekin ducklings yesterday. They're in a big box in the
:kitchen, and in 24 hours, they basically saturated their bedding with
:dribbled water (from their feeder) and duck poop. The upside is that
:they're generating lots of "organic material" for my compost bin.
:
:We built an enclosed pen off the side of the garden shed for them once
:the weather warms a bit and they're big enough to stay outside.
:Eventually, I'm going to enclose the garden and let the little rascals
:gorge to their hearts content on June bugs and slugs.
:
:Just thought I'd share.
:
:Mark

: watch out for the run off from the roof if that's a side of your shed
: with run off. I put some baby ducks that were just getting too big to
: be in the house, but not fledged, and it rained one day when I was
: gone to work, and even though I'd put plastic over the box.. and
: weighted it etc.. it got into the box and that equaled dead ducks..
: muscovy ducks.. which aren't *really* ducks, they're a south american
: waterfowl which do not have the oil glands that ducks do, so they can
: and do drown if they get into water and can't get out easily. They
: are funny so ugly they're cute and the don't quack!! So you can keep
: them without the entire neighborhood knowing they're there. They're
: prodigious producers of big eggs that aren't as pasty as duck eggs,
: the whites are more like chicken egg whites, and overall they're
: better than ducks. If you don't take them away from them, they will
: (provided there is a drake available) hatch out 10 to 15 eggs, as many
: as they can cover. If you're inclined to see them as livestock, not
: just pets, they're quite tasty.. tastes like beef!

: Otherwise if you gotta have ducks, india runner ducks or indian..
: stand bolt upright like a surprised regular duck. They look like
: animated bowling pins. ;-)

: Janice

I like the idea of duck eating slugs and other insect,but won't
they eat the vegetable and flowers??? I allways wanted to get some
muscovy but,I was afraid my garden would be devastated.
Philippe

Janice wrote:
: On 14 Mar 2004 21:50:43 -0800, (Mark) wrote:

:...that's all baby ducks do. That, and they spend inordinate amounts
:of time being cute as can be.
:
:I got 4 White Pekin ducklings yesterday. They're in a big box in the
:kitchen, and in 24 hours, they basically saturated their bedding with
:dribbled water (from their feeder) and duck poop. The upside is that
:they're generating lots of "organic material" for my compost bin.
:
:We built an enclosed pen off the side of the garden shed for them once
:the weather warms a bit and they're big enough to stay outside.
:Eventually, I'm going to enclose the garden and let the little rascals
:gorge to their hearts content on June bugs and slugs.
:
:Just thought I'd share.
:
:Mark

: watch out for the run off from the roof if that's a side of your shed
: with run off. I put some baby ducks that were just getting too big to
: be in the house, but not fledged, and it rained one day when I was
: gone to work, and even though I'd put plastic over the box.. and
: weighted it etc.. it got into the box and that equaled dead ducks..
: muscovy ducks.. which aren't *really* ducks, they're a south american
: waterfowl which do not have the oil glands that ducks do, so they can
: and do drown if they get into water and can't get out easily. They
: are funny so ugly they're cute and the don't quack!! So you can keep
: them without the entire neighborhood knowing they're there. They're
: prodigious producers of big eggs that aren't as pasty as duck eggs,
: the whites are more like chicken egg whites, and overall they're
: better than ducks. If you don't take them away from them, they will
: (provided there is a drake available) hatch out 10 to 15 eggs, as many
: as they can cover. If you're inclined to see them as livestock, not
: just pets, they're quite tasty.. tastes like beef!

: Otherwise if you gotta have ducks, india runner ducks or indian..
: stand bolt upright like a surprised regular duck. They look like
: animated bowling pins. ;-)

: Janice

I like the idea of duck eating slugs and other insect,but won't
they eat the vegetable and flowers??? I allways wanted to get some
muscovy but,I was afraid my garden would be devastated.
Philippe

Janice wrote:
: On 14 Mar 2004 21:50:43 -0800, (Mark) wrote:

:...that's all baby ducks do. That, and they spend inordinate amounts
:of time being cute as can be.
:
:I got 4 White Pekin ducklings yesterday. They're in a big box in the
:kitchen, and in 24 hours, they basically saturated their bedding with
:dribbled water (from their feeder) and duck poop. The upside is that
:they're generating lots of "organic material" for my compost bin.
:
:We built an enclosed pen off the side of the garden shed for them once
:the weather warms a bit and they're big enough to stay outside.
:Eventually, I'm going to enclose the garden and let the little rascals
:gorge to their hearts content on June bugs and slugs.
:
:Just thought I'd share.
:
:Mark

: watch out for the run off from the roof if that's a side of your shed
: with run off. I put some baby ducks that were just getting too big to
: be in the house, but not fledged, and it rained one day when I was
: gone to work, and even though I'd put plastic over the box.. and
: weighted it etc.. it got into the box and that equaled dead ducks..
: muscovy ducks.. which aren't *really* ducks, they're a south american
: waterfowl which do not have the oil glands that ducks do, so they can
: and do drown if they get into water and can't get out easily. They
: are funny so ugly they're cute and the don't quack!! So you can keep
: them without the entire neighborhood knowing they're there. They're
: prodigious producers of big eggs that aren't as pasty as duck eggs,
: the whites are more like chicken egg whites, and overall they're
: better than ducks. If you don't take them away from them, they will
: (provided there is a drake available) hatch out 10 to 15 eggs, as many
: as they can cover. If you're inclined to see them as livestock, not
: just pets, they're quite tasty.. tastes like beef!

: Otherwise if you gotta have ducks, india runner ducks or indian..
: stand bolt upright like a surprised regular duck. They look like
: animated bowling pins. ;-)

: Janice

I like the idea of duck eating slugs and other insect,but won't
they eat the vegetable and flowers??? I allways wanted to get some
muscovy but,I was afraid my garden would be devastated.
Philippe

Janice wrote:
: On 14 Mar 2004 21:50:43 -0800, (Mark) wrote:

:...that's all baby ducks do. That, and they spend inordinate amounts
:of time being cute as can be.
:
:I got 4 White Pekin ducklings yesterday. They're in a big box in the
:kitchen, and in 24 hours, they basically saturated their bedding with
:dribbled water (from their feeder) and duck poop. The upside is that
:they're generating lots of "organic material" for my compost bin.
:
:We built an enclosed pen off the side of the garden shed for them once
:the weather warms a bit and they're big enough to stay outside.
:Eventually, I'm going to enclose the garden and let the little rascals
:gorge to their hearts content on June bugs and slugs.
:
:Just thought I'd share.
:
:Mark

: watch out for the run off from the roof if that's a side of your shed
: with run off. I put some baby ducks that were just getting too big to
: be in the house, but not fledged, and it rained one day when I was
: gone to work, and even though I'd put plastic over the box.. and
: weighted it etc.. it got into the box and that equaled dead ducks..
: muscovy ducks.. which aren't *really* ducks, they're a south american
: waterfowl which do not have the oil glands that ducks do, so they can
: and do drown if they get into water and can't get out easily. They
: are funny so ugly they're cute and the don't quack!! So you can keep
: them without the entire neighborhood knowing they're there. They're
: prodigious producers of big eggs that aren't as pasty as duck eggs,
: the whites are more like chicken egg whites, and overall they're
: better than ducks. If you don't take them away from them, they will
: (provided there is a drake available) hatch out 10 to 15 eggs, as many
: as they can cover. If you're inclined to see them as livestock, not
: just pets, they're quite tasty.. tastes like beef!

: Otherwise if you gotta have ducks, india runner ducks or indian..
: stand bolt upright like a surprised regular duck. They look like
: animated bowling pins. ;-)

: Janice

As a youngster I had 2 Muscovy ducks that thrived on slugs (I grew up
outside Seattle). One time the neighbor kid and I had a contest to see
how many thy could eat. We stopped at 101 between them. Poor things
could hardly swallow water but they wanted back in the garden for slugs.
After that they had much shorter trips. Not only do they rid your
garden of slugs but they fertilize at the same time. Oh, and did I
mention they fertilizeG? They never once touched a flower or veggie,
just slugs, with a voratious appetite. BTW, they fertilized at the same
timeG, then fertilized a bit more, for several days............

Philippe Gravelle wrote:
I like the idea of duck eating slugs and other insect,but won't
they eat the vegetable and flowers??? I allways wanted to get some
muscovy but,I was afraid my garden would be devastated.
Philippe

As a youngster I had 2 Muscovy ducks that thrived on slugs (I grew up
outside Seattle). One time the neighbor kid and I had a contest to see
how many thy could eat. We stopped at 101 between them. Poor things
could hardly swallow water but they wanted back in the garden for slugs.
After that they had much shorter trips. Not only do they rid your
garden of slugs but they fertilize at the same time. Oh, and did I
mention they fertilizeG? They never once touched a flower or veggie,
just slugs, with a voratious appetite. BTW, they fertilized at the same
timeG, then fertilized a bit more, for several days............

Philippe Gravelle wrote:
I like the idea of duck eating slugs and other insect,but won't
they eat the vegetable and flowers??? I allways wanted to get some
muscovy but,I was afraid my garden would be devastated.
Philippe

As a youngster I had 2 Muscovy ducks that thrived on slugs (I grew up
outside Seattle). One time the neighbor kid and I had a contest to see
how many thy could eat. We stopped at 101 between them. Poor things
could hardly swallow water but they wanted back in the garden for slugs.
After that they had much shorter trips. Not only do they rid your
garden of slugs but they fertilize at the same time. Oh, and did I
mention they fertilizeG? They never once touched a flower or veggie,
just slugs, with a voratious appetite. BTW, they fertilized at the same
timeG, then fertilized a bit more, for several days............

Philippe Gravelle wrote:
I like the idea of duck eating slugs and other insect,but won't
they eat the vegetable and flowers??? I allways wanted to get some
muscovy but,I was afraid my garden would be devastated.
Philippe

On Tue, 16 Mar 2004 02:05:51 -0600, Katra wrote:

(snip)
Pekin drakes will also screw anything they can catch! Including
chickens. I had to give away the one I had due to this problem. He
harassed my bantam chickens. G

It's a duck thing.

Not only will they screw anything they can catch, but they will also fight with
other birds when they're growing up. We had some ducks(mallards) and chickens
which were both growing up at the same time and we noticed that the young drakes
and roosters would sometimes fight with each other if they got together. We
found one of the feisty young roosters dead with his neck broken one day. We're
not positive the duck did it, but it looked likely.

On Tue, 16 Mar 2004 02:05:51 -0600, Katra wrote:

(snip)
Pekin drakes will also screw anything they can catch! Including
chickens. I had to give away the one I had due to this problem. He
harassed my bantam chickens. G

It's a duck thing.

Not only will they screw anything they can catch, but they will also fight with
other birds when they're growing up. We had some ducks(mallards) and chickens
which were both growing up at the same time and we noticed that the young drakes
and roosters would sometimes fight with each other if they got together. We
found one of the feisty young roosters dead with his neck broken one day. We're
not positive the duck did it, but it looked likely.

On Tue, 16 Mar 2004 02:05:51 -0600, Katra wrote:

(snip)
Pekin drakes will also screw anything they can catch! Including
chickens. I had to give away the one I had due to this problem. He
harassed my bantam chickens. G

It's a duck thing.

Not only will they screw anything they can catch, but they will also fight with
other birds when they're growing up. We had some ducks(mallards) and chickens
which were both growing up at the same time and we noticed that the young drakes
and roosters would sometimes fight with each other if they got together. We
found one of the feisty young roosters dead with his neck broken one day. We're
not positive the duck did it, but it looked likely.

On 16 Mar 2004 18:12:01 GMT, Philippe Gravelle
wrote:

I like the idea of duck eating slugs and other insect,but won't
they eat the vegetable and flowers??? I allways wanted to get some
muscovy but,I was afraid my garden would be devastated.

They do a little damage, but mostly by trampling on small plants. They don't do
nearly as much damage as chickens and guineas can.