Around the beginning of July, it was as if a flip was switched within our little ponds — the duckweed
started growing like crazy! Our ducks are too big to be worth
moving back to the ponds to dine, so I figured — why not bring the
duckweed to them? It only took me a couple of minutes to scoop up
about a gallon of duckweed, tadpoles, and water bugs, and after the
ducks realized the bucket wasn’t going to bite, they dived in with
relish. Within minutes, every bit of greenery was gone.
I wrote last week that our ducks are too lazy to produce good-quality eggs since they don’t forage much.
However, my duckweed bucket suggests that I’m just not embracing the
duckness of ducks (as Joel Salatin would say). Although you can raise waterfowl on dry land,
that’s not the role they’re best suited for. Perhaps a bucket of
duckweed a few times a week is a happy compromise that will keep our
ducks healthy and make them a more sustainable part of the homestead?
we had ducks for a little while these guys are only lazy on land i always feel as if they act like their feet hurt (except for the indian runners). get them in some water and they get fast, a single 3 week old duck could eat a dozen feeder fish in 3 min.
Is there anyway you can incorporate your moat, i mean your stream, in the ducks’ life?
Rebecca — Mark asked me the same question. We definitely have lots of wild wet areas on our farm, but the trouble is that our dog Lucy doesn’t patrol down there, so our ducks would be…well…sitting ducks for predators. I suspect if we let the ducks enjoy our floodplain paradise, we wouldn’t have ducks for long.
our ducks always wandered all day and wanted to go home when it got dark. the only times we lost ducks was when someone forgot to lock them up at night. do you think you could train your ducks to free wander the unsafe areas during day and come home to a pasture/coop at night? I would not try it on babies but maybe adults could learn, if you get a couple well trained guys they would probably lead the others. maybe only feed grain in the coop.