Do ducks taste like what they eat?

[ibarbidahl]

Pen them up for a few weeks and finish them with corn, oats, grains or even pelleted feed. They WILL taste muddy if they are dabbling right up to slaughter.
It even passes to the eggs sometimes. We had a glut of tadpoles once so I let the ducks eat all they could - the next day the eggs tasted like frog. GROSS. Took a good week-10 days to get that smell/taste out of the eggs. Id' imagine same would be true for their meat.

 

[CRmuscovy]

Ha. Then it might be hard to get your ducks to stop eating mud?

Yes, if we need to, we would close them in. Right now they are free to roam until night.

 

[CRmuscovy]

Pen them up for a few weeks and finish them with corn, oats, grains or even pelleted feed. They WILL taste muddy if they are dabbling right up to slaughter.
It even passes to the eggs sometimes. We had a glut of tadpoles once so I let the ducks eat all they could - the next day the eggs tasted like frog. GROSS. Took a good week-10 days to get that smell/taste out of the eggs. Id' imagine same would be true for their meat.

Thank you for THAT heads up! The females are too young to lay eggs. Thank you for the advise because I have never tasted a duck egg and I wouldn't want my first experience to be a muddy tasting egg. @ibarbidahl

 

[Quatie]

Mine was free ranged. He tasted delicious. The big thing is about how you prep the meat. First one I cooked like fillet mignon. Tasted like it, but very gamey. Second one I stewed and I never want to got back to a pork pot roast again. So tender and good. Mine was months older than the ideal butchering age. I have seriously considered breeding them to eat now. You need to brine them.

 

[CRmuscovy]

Mine was free ranged. He tasted delicious. The big thing is about how you prep the meat. First one I cooked like fillet mignon. Tasted like it, but very gamey. Second one I stewed and I never want to got back to a pork pot roast again. So tender and good. Mine was months older than the ideal butchering age. I have seriously considered breeding them to eat now. You need to brine them.

@Quatie Thank you for the cooking advice. I will tell my husband because that is his department. We have pigs, too, and roasted pork is one of his favorites, so I told him what you said. Taking care of ducks is so much easier and more pleasant to me, but that makes the butching harder.

 

[Quatie]

@Quatie Thank you for the cooking advice. I will tell my husband because that is his department. We have pigs, too, and roasted pork is one of his favorites, so I told him what you said. Taking care of ducks is so much easier and more pleasant to me, but that makes the butching harder.

Yeah. I completely understand. It was not an easy decision for us the first time. But they have a good life while alive, which many animals don't get.

 

[CRmuscovy]

Yeah. I completely understand. It was not an easy decision for us the first time. But they have a good life while alive, which many animals don't get.

I keep telling myself that because they would have been eaten by a wild animal or gone bad. Their mother abandoned them because of a wild animal yanking her off the nest and she wouldn't go back to them. We are keeping the parents, the females, and one of the drakes that is very protective of the females. Farm life is beautiful and sad, bitter with the sweet.