The Quack Shack

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Speaking about the Mallards: They were awol the entire day, an opportunity that was immediately seized by the Ducknagers who raided the pond:

They like the pond so much that they decided to stay there over night. - Just like the ducknagers two years ago did!
Checked on them at 9pm and guess what: The Mallards are back on the pond too. Almost everybody is sitting on that floating island, which isn't so floaty anymore…

 

[Pyxis]

Did he fell into the plucker?

Lol! Ko Shamos are extremely hard feathered, so they often get that little bare line down the keel.

 

[Muscovy Wunda]

Sorry for not writing anything here yesterday (Sunday), we had to process about 30lbs of harvested onions, purple, white, yellow and sweet-yellow.
Clean them, cut off the greens, peel the bulbs clean, dice them and pack them into freezer bags.
It was a very tearful task…

I need photos of a yellow and sweet yellow onion please

 

[Miss Lydia]

The Mallard shelter made great progress, now it looks like this from the north-side:

From the west:

And finally from the south:

It is basically a large pile of hay with a cave in the middle. I want to cover the hay with some wood-chips at the bottom to seal of any drafts and then put some straw inside.

What about heavy snow would it cave in on them? It's looking good. I hope they will use it.

 

[rjohns39]

Good morning / evening folks

 

[Miss Lydia]

Good Tuesday Morn/Eve.

 

[Plague]

Good morning/evening all! Hope everyone is having a great Tuesday! Our ducklings all arrived a few minutes ago alive and lively! We got 3 Blue Swedish, 3 khaki Campbell, 3 black Swedish and one more rouen! So we now have males - 3 Blue Swedish, 1 Pekin, 1 Rouen, 1 white layer and 1 Golden 300. Our females are 4 Rouen, 5 khaki campbell, 3 Golden 300, and 3 Black Swedish! Of course the males and females have separate housing, and soon will be fixing up a run for the males so they will be separated while they are all let out. Still as of yesterday they have not been an issue with the male to female ratio, but it isn’t breeding season yet so we got to protect them, plus don’t want them all just cross breeding out of our control. As we intend to breed the rouen and Blue Swedish, probably breed one or two of the blue Swedish offspring with the new Black Swedish to breed Blacks also, that we haven’t quite worked out. Bellow is a couple pictures of the new babies right after we got them home and our starter brooder. Enjoy!

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Lol! Ko Shamos are extremely hard feathered, so they often get that little bare line down the keel.

Woah! - I hope you know what you're up to!?
=> I looked them up in the Germ,an and the English Wikpedia, this is a rare case where the German article is much more detailed that the English one:
The English article just explains the origin of the breed being from south-east Asia and that they've been created for cockfighting; plus some infos about how the western poultry associations recognize them.
The German Article is much more detailed, it explained that the Japanese name Shamo (軍鶏) means »Fighting Cock« and goes on with describing the breed as the »Premier Class« of poultry-keeping, because of their aggressiveness, combined with a high weight of up to 3Kg (over 6lbs!). The picture of a Shamo hen(?) reminds me more to a feathered dinosaur than a chicken:

No, Velociraptus Cluck is not my taste of chicken…

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

I need photos of a yellow and sweet yellow onion please

All in the freezer…
But there is no visible difference between a yellow onion and a sweet-yellow onion. Both look like this:

Just the sweet variant has a sweet taste, that makes it the ideal companion to BBQ for example. And if you like pasta with tomato-sauce, frying a sweet onion instead of a simple yellow onion makes the tomato sauce sweeter and somehow increases the aroma of the tomatos. (Assuming that you don't just pop-open a can with industrial made tomato-sauce… )

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

What about heavy snow would it cave in on them? It's looking good. I hope they will use it.

It will certainly collapse if the YellowStone super-volcano erupts and covers all of the continental USA with a foot of heavy volcanic ash… (I'm watching too much NatGeo-TV)

The support-post in front of the cave is a piece of treated 2x4 and nailed to a hardwood palette. That should be able to handle a the weight of a couple of feet of snow - which we rarely get here. I leaned on the pallet yesterday and it was holding up just fine. One of the corners of the palette is also resting on Mount Poop for additional support.
I also hope that the decomposing processes within Mount Poop will provide some additional heat during the winter.