The Quack Shack

[WannaBeHillBilly]

How it that even possible? - Blanca Duck spend the afternoon outside in the duckling box again and she did not look that dirty...

Spoiler: Really disgusting water

She was sitting on a thick layer of straw above the mud. She must have eaten all that dirt and

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

I love it when my girls all sound off too. It sounds like they are laughing really loud and my neighbors don't mind it so I am very fortunate. I can be thinking about something that makes me sad and then when they see me and start cracking up, I laugh with them. They are my therapy ducks, lol.

With today's weather and without the dux, i would spend the whole day in bed…

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

With the warm weather we have had the ducks do seem to think it is spring. I took my calendar out yesterday and pointed to February so they would know this is all a false alarm! LOL I saw my beautiful drake Pepper get frisky with his best friend the Runner Duck I bought along with him named Salt and he was very gentle so hopefully he will be a nice drake. Either that or he was being nice because down deep he knew it really wasn't March, lol.

Well, i just realized that march is just 18 days away…
I have already tilled the potato patch:

To the despair of the whole flock who wanted nothing more than to come into the garden.
But i need to check on the fence first, if there is a way out, they will all sit in the pond again.

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

My little lavender crested, wounded survivor of the dog attack is still limping after 33 days like Blanca. She now keeps her foot flat but still has to swing her leg out. She's much better than when she was walking on a rolled up foot. What seems to have helped the most is her toes on that foot fell off this week. So she has one regular webbie and a smaller one without toes.

She lost a toe?! - Not just the nail? The whole toe?
I cannot write here what i would have done with these dogs…

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

My little lavender crested, wounded survivor of the dog attack is still limping after 33 days like Blanca. She now keeps her foot flat but still has to swing her leg out. She's much better than when she was walking on a rolled up foot. What seems to have helped the most is her toes on that foot fell off this week. So she has one regular webbie and a smaller one without toes.

So 33 days and still limping? Can you send a video of her limping please? - It can be blurry, i just want to compare how she walks with what Blanca is doing. She is on day 21 after - whatever happened. My suspicion is still the neighbors dog. They still rely on that electronic fence, even though their dogs have caused an accident. Both of them got stung by my pellet gun because they were on my property...

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Googling around I see that there is some mixup with sorghum also being called Milo or Great millet, whereas millets actually are biologically different from the sorghum group - https://www.savorysuitcase.com/millet-vs-sorghum/ .

Around here proso millet has been grown traditionally but has faded in the last decades as the aim of producing more and more corn and wheat pushed it out. Lately sorghum has started making an appearance, primarily because of resilience to creative weather, grown mostly for silage and biogas but I'll try to grow a grain crop. Nowadays there are various cultivars available optimized for green volume (grows like bamboo) or for grain (much shorter stalks and generally more manageable plants).

Our land is too small to make a tractor and combine harvester economical but we have the option to hire someone in our village with the proper machinery so that's OK.

As said, you can give it a try, but be aware that you may never be able to get rid of these plants ever. On the other hand, that stuff has an excellent root system and i am thinking about planting them into the terraces that i am currently building in front of the house. We are being literally swamped with mud flowing downhill.

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Where I grew up sorguhm was raised for two reasons. Put up in silos for winter feed for the cows and distilled into molasses for the humans. I have some in the pantry. Better than map!e syrup.

Yeah, fermenting the whole plant as silage i assume. @Supercow wants to harvest the grains and that's a pita without the proper equipment…
Sorghum syrup? That sounds interesting, where's the river…
Can you also use that for baking dark bread? - At the moment i am using molasses and cleaning off the spoon is my personal highlight of the baking-day...

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

View attachment 3745518

So there's Sorghum Syrup available from Kentucky, Indiana and from the Smokey Mountains and the Muddy Pond.
I assume the dux would order that pond-stuff…

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Update on Blanca Duck: Today she made it past the three corkscrew bearing warriors! - And trapped herself between the duxling-box and the cold-frame, so in the box she went.
Yesterday evening i was about to run out of meal-worms and tried to bribe her with dried crickets. - Y'all know that »Wtf is that? Yuck! Eat that yourself!« look from a duck…
So she hates dried crickets! - I thought she would kill for those too, but i was wrong.
Had to apologize with some frozen tomato wedges.
Her leg is getting marginally better, she used it a lot in the tub today and she tried to scratch her head, but without success...

 

[Magnolia Ducks]

She lost a toe?! - Not just the nail? The whole toe?
I cannot write here what i would have done with these dogs…

Two and a half toes. The whole things.