Natural colorings for my poor Ming Mei?

[DuckiesAndBees]

I have a black walnut tree in the backyard, but I don't think we get walnuts until the fall. If you still need some by then I would be happy to send some. Do you need the ones that fall to the ground or the ones that are green on the tree?

 

[The Duck ABC's]

The unripe green ones are best. You want them to be juicy and not dried up. The juice is what makes the dye when it oxidates with the air.
BTW My friend had a commercial walnut farm and her ducks where in the orchards all day long. They ate some of the hulls and nothing happened. They don't like the taste and pretty soon ignore the stuff, but they try it each year just to make sure it is still nasty to them.

 

[nettie]

Thank you guys for your offers and advice!

We tried to see if black walnut hull extract would work on her feathers, along with ground hulls. It didn't work (we tried in on her molted feathers) straight up, so we tried it also with using some lemon juice and applied a little bit of heat from a hair dryer. No luck.... I wonder if it's due to them not being fresh. We found a place that sells black walnuts ripe in the shell, but it seems that the unripened hulls work best.

We are going to try a poultice of mashed blueberries and turmeric to see if that does anything in the meantime... Otherwise we'll have to start asking around the end of summer to see if we can find someone who has walnut trees! Someone also suggested using a non-toxic fabric paint marker on the back of her head to work right away, but I'm a bit leery of that idea.

Someone else also suggest tea or henna. I know natural henna is a red color, but you can mix in woad to get a brown. my concerns wth those two ideas are- Will the tannins in the tea affect her skin at all? (I know with humans, if you place a towel soaked with super saturated black tea under your arm pits, you will sweat less. The tannins close up sweat glands). I know ducks extract their heat through their bills and feet, but I don't know that tannins will do to her skin. And with the Henna and Woad, I wonder if those are safe for her to ingest at all. She will pick at the stuff on her skin a little or she'll try to preen it, accidentally ingesting some, and I don't want to try anything that might be harmful for her to swallow. Any thoughts?

 

[The Duck ABC's]

You can also try acorns. They do not die black but brown. Again it has to be fresh. Once the juices dry up it is no good.