ok, so I have been doing research on ducks in anticipation of getting some this year, and got to thinking(a vice, like philosophy, that I really should give up in favor of a more socially acceptable one... especially considering I am not particularly good at either
, historically speaking, how did chickens ever become "the" bird... you know what I mean.. the when people think poultry, they think chicken... not that I plan on giving up on my chooks any time soon, but when you look at them side by side with ducks
-ducks apparently lay better... the laying breeds, like campbells, are right up there with, or even above the average for leghorns, and even meat breeds, like the pekin, lay better than a lot of dual purpose chickens...
-they grow faster(reaching mature weight almost twice as fast as chickens, according to one study I found), and the meat breeds get at least as big as the largest chickens(13+lbs)...
-the wild mallard, from which all the domestic ducks(excepting of course, the muscovy) are descended, is found practically everywhere in the northern hemisphere, while the jungle fowl, the ancestor of the domestic chicken, is limited to SE asia...
it just seems to me that the ducks have some distinct advantages as a domestic animal over chickens, both from production viewpoints to sheer probability of development, and yet as far as I can tell, they have never enjoyed the success that chickens have... heck, the superiority of chickens is so ingrained in our culture , that it even shows up in cartoons(really think about Foghorn Leghorn and Daffy Duck, and which one gets the short end of the stick more often)... again, I am not badmouthing chickens... I have a bunch and truly enjoy having them... but from a purely intellectual point of view, you really have to wonder what about them allowed them to surpass ducks as domestic poultry... is there some huge disadvantage to ducks that I am missing?..
, historically speaking, how did chickens ever become "the" bird... you know what I mean.. the when people think poultry, they think chicken... not that I plan on giving up on my chooks any time soon, but when you look at them side by side with ducks-ducks apparently lay better... the laying breeds, like campbells, are right up there with, or even above the average for leghorns, and even meat breeds, like the pekin, lay better than a lot of dual purpose chickens...
-they grow faster(reaching mature weight almost twice as fast as chickens, according to one study I found), and the meat breeds get at least as big as the largest chickens(13+lbs)...
-the wild mallard, from which all the domestic ducks(excepting of course, the muscovy) are descended, is found practically everywhere in the northern hemisphere, while the jungle fowl, the ancestor of the domestic chicken, is limited to SE asia...
it just seems to me that the ducks have some distinct advantages as a domestic animal over chickens, both from production viewpoints to sheer probability of development, and yet as far as I can tell, they have never enjoyed the success that chickens have... heck, the superiority of chickens is so ingrained in our culture , that it even shows up in cartoons(really think about Foghorn Leghorn and Daffy Duck, and which one gets the short end of the stick more often)... again, I am not badmouthing chickens... I have a bunch and truly enjoy having them... but from a purely intellectual point of view, you really have to wonder what about them allowed them to surpass ducks as domestic poultry... is there some huge disadvantage to ducks that I am missing?..
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