Muscovy keepers share your pics!

[LBejaran]

I have a Male named indie, he's my baby!, i'm so sorry for your loss i hope that your swedish duck and Indie are healthy and happy where they are now

I hope so, too. They were my favorites but Indie was the real gem. She'd come up to me, full of sass, and bob her head while hissing at me until I gave her some dog food. She managed to bring Clyde around so he could be more social--actually, probably so she could get more dog food.

These birds are just so intelligent. Indie actually would fly and if she started leaving the yard, she'd turn and come back. It was a sigh to see.

 

[poult]

They are all staying inside (and hopefully won't smell as bad when I finish selling off the other ducklings I hatched out from the other duck that was taken) until they are about a month old...maybe. I've been keeping them close and I let them sleep in my hair so they get accustomed to being around me.

I would trust the geese, but my dogs seem to have a vendetta against them now. Because the geese are so huge and are very obviously intimidating (they run around with their wings extended like they are running at you), my 13 year old boxer/shepherd mix Sandy absolutely hates them. She is terrified and has attempted to jump at them when they get too close. The same happened with the muscovies, actually, but she never hurt them. I think the most she ever did was pick them up (she managed to get her mouth very carefully around the start of both wings on the back) and move them to a new spot. I guess the geese are just too big for that. Maybe it's because she's too old to want to deal with them. She's probably insecure and grumpy.

Anyway, I'm going to need some new blood in about ten months. It looks like I have a couple pairs but I'll probably end up traveling again to get more males and females to mix with my babies. I'm slowly phasing out my other duck breeds so I can have only Muscovy ducks and maybe some call ducks. That'll be some time from now, though. Maybe next spring someone can help me find some. Or maybe this summer so Ican have a bunch of mature ducks next spring.

That's so sweet!

Arent animals just the oddest things sometimes?

I wish you the best of luck to you & your flock

 

[Bonji]

One more thing.....


Anyone else have a drake (or duck) that runs their own earthworm farm?

Our drake will get bill fulls of water and walk them all the way over to one of his two earthworm farms.  He wets the ground with the water.  He will then dig up the earth with his bill, push it out of the way with his feet, and then find the earthworms, usually lots.  He tosses them out to his ladies, and eats a few himself.  This last time that the kids watched, Kuhflecken wasn't with him, so he picked up the biggest fattest worm, and carried it all of the way into the coop to the back corner where her nest is, to feed it to her.


Oh, he puts all of the dirt back when he is done farming.  And he has two farms, one along the edge of a rock, and one in a more sunny spot.

This is sensational! I wish I could see. I have 7 muscovies, one of which is a drake. I will build him a compost pile near his shelter and see what happens. Unreal!
Love your shelter pic too.

 

[Bonji]

One of my ducks got to hatch 2 chicks!

 

[Alaskan]

thanks!

even though we do eat the ducklings, we LOVE our breeders and are very attached to them, I will cry buckets when we finally loose them.

here is our favorite duck, Kuhflecken, this is from last year, but she is on a nest right now.

 

[Bonji]

Very sweet pic!

 

[Alaskan]

thanks...she is perfect!

she is a fantastic mother (both brooding and taking care of ducklings), has a great personality, and I love her color.

 

[Miss Lydia]

One of my ducks got to hatch 2 chicks!

Looks like visiting hours are happening. Don't let mama Scovy have any bathing water or she will have those chicks in their with them, and that wouldn't be good.

 

[Bonji]

There's no bath for her for a while, unless she lets me mind them whilst she waddles off down the creek. Wish my scovies would have a successful duckling hatch, that's why this one has chickens now. Kuhflekin is the woman!

 

[houdiniduck]

I had a few duck eggs do that before but there wasn't enough humidity for them to hatch and they all died.If you think any might be alive raise that humidity to 70%!!!!

Well I forced myself to do eggtopsies and I think they were shrink wrapped, so you were right... BUT, I candled every egg before going in through the air cells and to my surprise one is still alive. Wasn't moving but I opened the air cell to see what had happened and he moved under the membrane so I pulled it open over his little beak. He looks like he was close to suffocating, but got very wiggly once I opened a breathing hole for him. I wet his membrane with a tiny bit of water, wrapped his egg in a wet paper towel and put a wet paper towel in the bator along with the water tray. I put him back in, now to see what happens.

The other egg i opened before his looked like it had just died, so maybe i caught this one in time, but I don't think he is ready to hatch. Good thoughts for the precious baby surviving! I will check on him through the night to make sure he doesn't dry out.

I definately won't be trusting my 39 year old family heirloom incubator to hatch ducks next time. The humidity just won't get high enough I think. My grandpa made it from scratch and we recently refurbished it, but Maybe it is too big to hold a higher humidity.