Farmers have been using ducks in Asia to help grow rice for centuries.
Once the rice gets to 25 days old they start releasing ducks in small groups of 10 or 20 depending on the size of the field.
Using this method avoids costly pesticides and fertilizers and you get the duck eggs and meat as a bonus. Maybe this process could be modified to work for cranberries or some other kind of bog crop?
Ducks’ Ditty by Kenneth Grahame
All along the backwater, Through the rushes tall,
Ducks are a-dabbling, Up tails all!
Ducks’ tails, drakes’ tails, Yellow feet a-quiver,
Yellow bills all out of sight Busy in the river!
Slushy green undergrowth Where the roach swim–
Here we keep our larder, Cool and full and dim.
Everyone for what he likes! WE like to be
Heads down, tails up, Dabbling free!
High in the blue above Swifts whirl and call–
Our ducks seem to like to throw problems at us. First there was the dirty-egg dilemma, then the ducks-refusing-to-go-to-bed disaster, and now…their eggs have turned green.
No, I don’t mean the pretty tinge of color that’s sometimes present in a duck egg’s shell. Instead, about two weeks ago, I started cracking open duck eggs…and finding unpleasantly green yolks inside.
At first, I guessed that cold weather might be causing some kind of chemical reaction with the yolk, a bit like you sometimes get a green layer on the outside of a hard-boiled yolk. However, weather warmed up and the eggs stayed green, so I did a little research.
The consensus on the internet is that green duck eggs come about when your flock finds some sort of wild food — possibly acorns — that affects the yolk color. Luckily, the eggs are still safe to eat and seem to taste about the same. So, if you find some green eggs in your egg nests, don’t be like Dr. Seuss’s character and refuse to eat them. Instead, you may find yourself saying, “I do so like green eggs and ham. Thank you. Thank you, Sam-I-Am.”