My ducks free range all summer too: my “landrace ducks” (saved and bred the smartest/best adapted) teach their babies to hunt for bugs; they all fan out in search formation across the pasture every morning. My garden food is I guess both easier and tastier to eat than most weeds though? I wouldn’t argue the point.
They ate the comfrey down past the ground, dead so it never came back. I think they just liked it? Maybe it had lots of fresh juicy shoots until it ran out of energy? We don’t have a staggered season here, so fresh shoots (rather than old woody seed stems) in August just never happens. Or maybe it was in fall before the ground froze and they dug it up once the rest of the greens were dead?
It’s given me incentive to plant a huge patch for them though, if I can keep them away long enough for it to grow. They seem to love it so much.
I’m trying to start a landrace of ducks with the ones I have. I’ve had most of them since last May and the goal this year is to get them to hatch their own eggs. I know the runners I have are behaviorally not motherly but some of the others I have supposedly are. Even though we’ve left large piles of eggs in the pen they haven’t been interested in sitting on them. Maybe it’s too early and they’ll do it later in the year. Are yours naturally motherly?
The line began because I thought a predator had eaten one of my ducks, but instead she emerged from under the hood of the snowblower with 19 ducklings a month later and began teaching them to forage. Basically the way I select for the line is: do they keep producing little ones without needing my precious sheltered spaces?
The flipside is, until the ducklings are even a couple months old mamas do not want me close. I’ll take that trade-off because they’re equally good at fighting off foxes, ravens, etc.
A duck landrace, that’s interesting. Someone I know has a kind of landrace thing going with her ducks. She’s encouraging the monogamy trait (drake and duck permanently paired) as she says it makes managing them a whole lot easier. I think she avoids breeds that have poor to no mothering instincts too. Apart from that, she just lets them do their thing. They free range most afternoons.
I put mine up every night because of predators and let them out by about 8am each morning. By then they’ve all laid eggs. We have a lot of predators around, including two bobcats caught on camera in the neighborhood which is why I put them up. They go in on their own if I’m late and I just close the door. I think I’ll just have to wait and keep my hopes up. They made a new nesting site in the pen and it’s very covered. Hopefully they will go broody there. Any suggestions on how I can convince them to go broody?
Yeah, I’ve started putting mine in during winter because of the lynx, which are apparently resistant to bearspray and can come in along the treetops so the dogs can’t keep them away. I can’t imagine that will continue during summer, though.
If you want them to go broody I’d recommend the following:
give them lots of safe-feeling nesting spots, like buckets on their sides half-filled with straw; basically smaller areas that are fairly concealed.
mark the date on the eggs, and only leave the last three days’ worth of eggs or so. The last thing you want is a nesting mama to have a rotten egg explode under her and all over the other, half-developed eggs. Trust me.
honestly maybe confine them a little later in the morning than normal.
here they are very day-length-triggered for nesting. The geese like to start shortly after lughnasadh, the ducks like to nest somewhat later, closer to solstice. You probably don’t have as extreme swings as I do
keep older hens in your flock. The older they get, the more they seem to like to nest.
ask around. If you can find someone who is raising ducks only for eggs, you may be able to trade them your non-broody for their annoyingly-broody ones. My Snowblower line will do almost anything in order to raise a clutch of eggs, and it runs in the family. Instead of trying to get yours, who have no interest, to brood-- maybe try to breed that in.
I wish I could send you eggs!
Here’s the kind of structure they appreciate to nest in (though that’s a goose in there):
I wish I could un-pair some of my geese better, it can lead to issues including fighting and poor genetics decisions. I wonder what benefit she gets from it, or what part of management is easier for her?
