Author: Anna & Mark

Clean and happy ducks

March 4, 2015 Ducks 1 Comment
Snowy ducks
“Ducks don’t like change…any sudden change can stop a duck’s production…sudden food change, really anything! Even something like not getting as much water as they are used to. If you don’t have a bucket in your coop they can dunk their heads in, that would be stressful to them also… That’s where chickens have an advantage.. much more resilient to changes.” — angie silvera

 


After reading Angie’s comment on Mark’s lament about our ducks’ lack of eggs, I immediately filled up a bucket with water to treat our flock. Angie was totally right — our waterfowl had been cooped up indoors with no way to clean their feathers for weeks, and if they felt as dingy as they looked, chances were they needed the pick-me-up.


But our flock had other things on their minds. Like the raging snow-melt-filled creek that was finally sufficient to tempt them out across the snow. Clean and happy, our ducks finally gave us the first egg in weeks. Here’s hoping they soon return to the four eggs a day we’d been enjoying pre-snow!

How well do ducks handle snow

February 25, 2015 Ducks 1 Comment
ducks and chickens snowed in

It’s been over a week since our flock of ducks and chickens has had a chance to forage outside.


The ducks had been laying at a nice regular rate, but that stopped when they started being cooped up all day.


I suspect it’s the stress of spending too much time with the chickens that’s caused the slow down. Maybe a bigger coop or more privacy from the chickens would yield better results?

Unboiling an egg

February 18, 2015 News No Comments
how to unboil an egg

How do you unboil a chicken egg?


First you separate the egg white from the yolk and boil it at 194 degrees for 20 minutes. Then you dissolve the egg whites with a chemical called urea and spin it really fast.


The egg whites end up stretching back to their normal shape which restores the proteins to 85 percent of where they started from. If the process can be scaled up it might produce new types of enzymes for home cooks and large food producers, but for now it’s mainly useful in cancer research where proteins need to be refolded.


Image credit goes to the University of California in Irvine.