They say a picture is worth a thousand words, well in this case it sure is. People ask us all the time about the difference between chicken and duck eggs, well you can see it below in color and richness alone.
Recently we did a class for about 50 students and staff members who were at our farm for four days. We served them a full breakfast two mornings. As out demand is so high for our eggs we could not feed 50 people eggs from our ducks two days in a row. So for the first time in a very long time I had to buy eggs. The eggs on the right are top quality organic chicken eggs. See the beautiful deep yellow orange in the bowl on the left, those are our pastured duck eggs.
This is why I often say while duck eggs beat chicken eggs no matter how you cook them try them sunny side up, poached, basted or say over medium with soft yolks. They will simply blow you away. When cooked over medium the yolks are almost like yolk butter, they are that rich and wonderful.
In Season Two – Duck Chronicles Episode Ten – Let the Integration Begin, the baby girls get to meet the main flock. It will still be a while before we put them in the holding area with the adults over night but everyone seems to be largely ignoring each other.
I may have to do a rain dance soon, we really and I mean really need some rain.
Sweet Girl is now out and about with her three tiny babies. We visit her and another Muscovy that seems to want the job of “Aunt Ducky”, but we will have to wait and see if Sweet Girl accepts the offer in a future episode.
Simple fountain total cost less than $25. Take this pump and use half inch PVC pipe.
Dry fit is all you need no glue so easy to clean and service. Install a strait piece of pipe the length you want, wire tie the pump to a broken piece of cinder block, put an end cap on the top of the pipe that you have drilled a series of holes into in the pattern you want, done.
Our small pond really and I mean really needed this. We think all the catfish died, we stocked way too soon. I knew better but the stocking truck was at the feed store and I gave it a shot.
No bodies but no fish coming for food any more and I did see a huge great blue heron down there. So it will be gold fish for the next round after about a week of this running. The video is only 10 seconds but you can see how good it works for a small pond.
Today on the S2 – Duck Chronicles Episode Nine – A New Fodder System, Just In Time, we go over the new sprouting/fodder system I built for the ducks. While there is nothing wrong with my low tech bucket system with the growing in population we need to produce a LOT MORE sprouts so it was time for an upgrade.
These are the mixing trays I used for the system and as a baby duck pool. Mixing Tubs
This is the shelf system I used, very easy to assemble Steel Shelving
We also visit with the little girls who are learning to hone their hunting skills and developing pack hunting techniques. We note the loss of one more baby that didn’t make it and get an update on the container gardens.
Buddy and Joe show up for Goose Cam but they just don’t have any mean really left in them so it is more look at the camera then attack it. We take a stroll over to the other side of the property and see the damage the Two Assclowns (Charlie and Max) did to the baby duck enclosure last night in a full on run. No ducks or dog were harmed, just one more thing to fix as always.
The baby girls are doing great and likely only three weeks away from full flock integration. The quail are at least half way grown now, doing well and loving the extras after micro green harvest. Going to have to find a way to allow Dorothy to move the quail tractor when I am gone though.
Lastly we check in on Broody Mama Muscovy (AKA Sweet Girl) who is now no longer sweet and defending her babies with the care only a mom can. After a bumpy start with her first brood she has it down now. It appears all the eggs she hatched and kept babies from are from “Little Browns” clutch we found hidden in the bushes. So we have three new baby mallards.
The end got cut off here due to too much video on the phone and needing to delete some. What got left off is basically that we are doing our work on a very difficult property to show what can be done and we are doing it at a large scale.
One Note – the actual cubic yards to cover 3 acres in 4 inches is about 1500, don’t know what I was thinking when I said that crazy large number. Still 1500 yards at 10 dollars a yard is 15,000 dollars. Think about that.
Many of the “all you need to do” suggestions are given with good intention but don’t address the reality of where we are, the scale we operate at and the time and money constraints everyone has.
I actually feel there is a big danger in Permaculture with what I call “over simplified all you need to do is thinking”.
I will have a video out soon (not part of the chronicles) to address that. Because I think this does a lot of harm to permaculture’s credibility. This is from well-intentioned individuals, who simply do not know, what they do not know.
Sometimes in the micro and often even in the macro view of the complex design considerations of permaculture, specifically at broader scales then the quarter acre suburban gardens most permies are working in.
