Tomato Wars

Some people like to slice up treats for their ducks. I rather like to watch them do it for themselves. My ducks' first experience with tomatoes were grape tomatoes. We would let them ripen a bit so they would become slightly soft. At first the ducks would squash them, then swallow them, but after a while, they stopped squashing them. There were no bad incidents, but I thought that probably wasn't the best way to go. They could have a problem and I didn't want that! So I got regular tomatoes. Now normally I toss the tomato high enough that it splits on impact and I toss 2 or 3 at the same time to divide up the ducks. This time for this video they got one tomato - direct from the store - not over-ripe - rolled gently out on the lawn... It is all on them to get to the goodies inside.

Disclaimer: In order to match the length of the song (sort of), I sped the video up by about 20%. In order to get the ducks' interest up, I starved them for 4 days (just kidding). Kaine is a jerk... nothing I can do about that...

The Runners do something similar when they dig up a sunroot tuber. Great video!

LOL!! That's some funny stuff! Thanks for sharing. I suddenly feel the need to go find a tomato for my ducks.

Amiga said:

The Runners do something similar when they dig up a sunroot tuber. Great video!

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Thanks! I figure I do less work than chopping it up. I get more entertainment. It looks to me like they enjoy it. And normally I put out two or three at a time so the competition isn't quite so fierce. The pieces they tear off are normally fairly small, but even when they aren't they aren't completely surrounded by skin so I would think they would deteriorate fairly quickly along with normal things in their crop so they will get to the gizzard before they start going bad. A whole cherry tomato could sit in their crop a day or two I would think and that wouldn't be great.

Legitimate concern - though based on throughput of peas, might not be likely. I just don't know.

I remember hearing crackling in Einz's belly one night after she ate a hickory nut whole. Scared me, both seeing the thing slide down the inside of her throat, and hearing the crackling. She is fine.

That is freaking hysterical! We are dying laughing over here!

Amiga said:

Legitimate concern - though based on throughput of peas, might not be likely. I just don't know.

I remember hearing crackling in Einz's belly one night after she ate a hickory nut whole. Scared me, both seeing the thing slide down the inside of her throat, and hearing the crackling. She is fine.

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Peas will pass for sure. I am confident that anything that could remotely resemble food would be crushed if it made it to their gizzard (I saw a .22 casing that somebody had ingested and passed - it got crushed pretty good). But I am sure there are limits to the neck stretching (Entie has the smallest neck even of the runners and a cherry tomato is about 1-1/2x the size of her neck normally). And if the whole piece wouldn't pass into the gizzard, it might not get a bite on something with a smooth round skin - don't know and would rather error on the side of caution. Because all my other errors seem to result in heartache. I never had any problems with the cherry tomatoes, but now I get tomato foot ball, don't have to worry about them and larger tomatoes are cheaper - Win win win!

Tevyes Dad said:

Amiga said:

 


The Runners do something similar when they dig up a sunroot tuber.  Great video!

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Thanks!  I figure I do less work than chopping it up.  I get more entertainment.  It looks to me like they enjoy it.  And normally I put out two or three at a time so the competition isn't quite so fierce. The pieces they tear off are normally fairly small, but even when they aren't they aren't completely surrounded by skin so I would think they would deteriorate fairly quickly along with normal things in their crop so they will get to the gizzard before they start going bad.  A whole cherry tomato could sit in their crop a day or two I would think and that wouldn't be great.

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I thought about that the other day when mine did swallowed a whole grape, so now I quarter them, lol.

-Kathy

Err on the side of caution - that's the way to go!!!

Amiga said:

Err on the side of caution - that's the way to go!!!

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Stuff like that gives me panic attacks, lol.

-Kathy