Showing posts with label Livestock. Show all posts

Life and Death with Livestock

This was a sad week this week, as we lost one of our ducklings, we found it drowned on Thursday morning, which was not a very pleasant way to start the day. Somehow it managed to get into a bucket of water, that it was not able to get out of. We were aware that water can be dangerous for small ducklings, as they don't have all their feathers yet and find it hard to get out of some water areas.

I had noticed on Wednesday afternoon, that the old ducklings (about 5 weeks old) - were now able to just reach into the large buckets of water and start drinking from there. So we were very surprised to find one stuck inside the bucket the next morning. We can not determine how since they were only just able to reach in - they were able to get totally in the bucket. We are presuming that it must have jumped and fell in and just managed to get it just right to accidently fall into the bucket.

Due to the heat at the moment, and how clumsy ducks are we have about 15 different water containers for the ducks in the yard, we are careful with the water levels and height of the sides of the containers so that ducks don't drown. I now empty the bucket out when I do the last night check on the ducks and put the bucket upside down, so that no more of the ducklings can accidently fall in there at night time.

Selling some ducklings

On Friday morning, we planned that we would sell some of the small ducklings, as we had too many of them here 22 ducklings in total, 11 who were 5 weeks old from Krystal, and 10 from Thistle who where 3 weeks old. We were going to sell 6 of the three week old ducklings to Brookfield Produce, this too was a slightly sad event, as we would never be seeing these ducklings again.

It was a stress full time for all concerned, the mother duck, was not happy, the ducklings were scared, as I was chasing them around and trying to capture them, and I was feeling bad, scaring the ducks. I also managed to get a few small scratches on my hands from grabbing the ducklings.

We then transported the ducklings in two boxes and transferred them to a cage, at the shop. This would be the first time that they were not on grass and only had duck mash to eat. It was a sad feeling standing there watching them get used to their new home, as all six of them clustered in the corner I was going to take a photo of them for this post, but decided against it.

Thistle now has four ducklings left, we did this deliberately as we thought it would be cruel to take away all of her ducklings, especially since we are planning on keeping all of the older ones for the next few months.

Growth Rate

We have noticed that one of the older ducklings is noticeably smaller than all the other ducklings,  of the same age. The ducklings are started to get quiet large now and we can start to estimate which ones are male and females. A Muscovy Drake (male) duck will end up about twice the size of the Muscovy duck (female).

The top picture - the black and white duckling at the top, we think is a female and you can see that the duckling that we are worried about is much smaller than the female. The white duck in front is the male duck from the first picture



The Bottom picture shows what we think is a male duckling, and the duckling that we are worried about the size of. You can see from the image how much smaller one is than the other.




From this batch of ducklings, there is only one, and the first of any duckling that we have had that is a mixture of very small section of black and white - creating a grey effect, whereas all the other ducklings have been large areas or black and large areas of white.

The younger ducklings of which we have the 4 left, there is only 'grey' duckling in there as well, and he seems to be a bit smaller as well, although it is hard to tell at this stage. We are not sure if this duckling is just the Runt of the litter, or if there is something 'genetic' about ducks with that coloring.

We will be keeping an eye on the ducklings and see what happens over time and hope that he continues to grow. We also keep a closer eye on this one at feeding time to make sure that he is not kept away from the food.

Duckling

Ducklings - new life. 


As I sit here and write this, we have two ducks (Crystal and Thistle) who are brooding, with Crystal's eggs due to hatch today or tomorrow and Thistle's eggs due two weeks later. This will be our 3rd and 4th batch of baby ducklings, and each time we still learn something new and are getting better and better at the process.

I read a phrase recently that has stuck in my mind and I keep thinking about it

"If you have livestock you will have dead stock" 

Which we realise if we are going to move to a farm and raise animals, this is something that we will have to get used to. I always get very attached to my animals and we spend a lot of time and money looking after them and making sure that they are as happy and well fed as they can be, so it is sad when you see that something goes wrong.

This morning when we went to check the ducklings, we found a dead duckling that was not perfectly formed and was dead. It is always disturbing and sad to find something like that.

We only have a small number of livestock at the moment, namely 5 ducks, and 1 hive of Australian Native bees. We also have several pets (2 dogs, 1 cat).

Delta and Ducklings, one of them would be Thistle.
When we have a batch of ducklings, we consider them as livestock, rather than as pets, as the original 5 ducks are, and do not name the ducklings, unless we decide that one of them will be kept, and then we will name them.

We are thinking that we will keep and then slaughter a small number of male ducks from one of these batches, as we will need to start eating the ducks soon, if we want to start moving towards a semi self sufficient life style. This is something that I am not looking forward to, having to take the life of an animal that I would have seen born, but realise that is the natural cycle, and will give the animal the best life and death that is possible. I will have a friend that is a butcher come and help me with this the first time that I do this, and will research how to do it so that there is least stress for the animal.

Since we can not yet determine the gender of the ducklings until they are older, we will not be able to determine which will be males and females, as we will also keep some of Crystal's ducklings to increase the size of the flock of females. We think that about 8 females is the right number for our one male (Donald) for the space of the yard we have here. We also think that 8 females should give us a sufficient number of eggs for us and our neighbours.

Every hour or two, I continue to check in on the mother ducks and make sure that they are happy and healthy and have water and food, and to check for baby ducklings. The last few times we were able to tell that the ducklings had arrived by just walking near the duck house from the chirping of the baby ducklings, which is a very distinctive sound, and surprisingly loud for an animal that is so small.

Once the ducklings have hatched I will put some photos up here.
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