Hi everyone! My name is Shawnee. I've been perusing the threads here for all of your wonderful insights for about a couple of months now, and I figured it's probably about time I popped on and make friendly with you good people. And to introduce you to the ducklings you've been helping me to care for! Thank you for that, by the way! 
My husband and I had been considering getting chicks for a few years now, since we bought our home in Montague. But after doing a lot of reading, mostly here, ducks eventually won out. And we invested ourselves in Indian Runners. We put up a 1900 sq ft veggie garden our first spring here, so decided we wanted birds that would work well in and around our plantings. We started off with two fawn/white ducklings, and got three more by online hatchery three weeks later, a blue, a chocolate and a black - I like variety.
They've been an incredible and joyful handful so far, and it's only been eight weeks!
In the foreground is Pork-n-Beans, PeeBee for short, and behind is Pepperjack. PeeBee was giving the sneaky side-eye, because I caught them eating my squash flowers again.
And the younger group! The blue is Peirogi, black is Portabello, and chocolate - with her wild little punk rocker head fluff - is Pumpkin. We're only certain of the sex of Pumpkin and Portabello, ducks. The rest we'll have to wait to see if any turn out to be drakes.
And yes, you may notice, they all have food names. My reality check. We're not raising them as meat ducks, per se. They will be our organic fertilizer, insecticide alternative, egg suppliers and beloved garden companions for years to come. And after living the best life we can give them in "Runner Manor"...
...sharing our yearly harvest and lazing away the hot summer afternoons in their pond, we'll give thanks to them for all their help and the joy they've brought, and then.
*sniffles*
But, we won't think about that right now. Right now, they eat all of the fallen mulberries from my tree, and have a ducky laugh over the fact I collect and serve them nutritious weed salads at poolside. They delight in the nighttime buffet of bugs attracted to the solar garden lights around their pen, and the dried mealworms they get daily as treats. They are infinitely fascinated with trying - and failing - to eat the freckles off my arms. And they have a lot of open space to roam and forage and keep busy for a long time to come.
My husband and I had been considering getting chicks for a few years now, since we bought our home in Montague. But after doing a lot of reading, mostly here, ducks eventually won out. And we invested ourselves in Indian Runners. We put up a 1900 sq ft veggie garden our first spring here, so decided we wanted birds that would work well in and around our plantings. We started off with two fawn/white ducklings, and got three more by online hatchery three weeks later, a blue, a chocolate and a black - I like variety.
They've been an incredible and joyful handful so far, and it's only been eight weeks!
In the foreground is Pork-n-Beans, PeeBee for short, and behind is Pepperjack. PeeBee was giving the sneaky side-eye, because I caught them eating my squash flowers again.
And the younger group! The blue is Peirogi, black is Portabello, and chocolate - with her wild little punk rocker head fluff - is Pumpkin. We're only certain of the sex of Pumpkin and Portabello, ducks. The rest we'll have to wait to see if any turn out to be drakes.
And yes, you may notice, they all have food names. My reality check. We're not raising them as meat ducks, per se. They will be our organic fertilizer, insecticide alternative, egg suppliers and beloved garden companions for years to come. And after living the best life we can give them in "Runner Manor"...
...sharing our yearly harvest and lazing away the hot summer afternoons in their pond, we'll give thanks to them for all their help and the joy they've brought, and then.
*sniffles*
But, we won't think about that right now. Right now, they eat all of the fallen mulberries from my tree, and have a ducky laugh over the fact I collect and serve them nutritious weed salads at poolside. They delight in the nighttime buffet of bugs attracted to the solar garden lights around their pen, and the dried mealworms they get daily as treats. They are infinitely fascinated with trying - and failing - to eat the freckles off my arms. And they have a lot of open space to roam and forage and keep busy for a long time to come.
Shawnee 
