Ducks

We bought two (hopefully!) female Aylesbury Ducks at the end of April 2005 from Poultry in Motion. They are around 9 months old and as yet don't have names.

These are the pictures from their first week: (click to enlarge)

Settling in	Resting
Exploring	NOT eating the flowers
Slug hunting	Bathing - see how far the water gets flung!

As time progressed, eggs didn't appear and we started to have our suspicions. Then the larger one really started to bully the smaller of the two, forcing it to escape into flower beds but still losing most of its feathers from its back by being pecked. We started to feel really sorry for it. Obviously the stronger male was trying to force the smaller one to leave its territory.

Briefly the larger one gained the name of 'Easter', the proposed dispatch date but this passed with no action. It was renamed 'Midsummer' and finally after reading lots of web pages, the smaller one was put away in the hutch, Jean held the larger one peacefully in her arms while I snapped its neck. It was all over very quickly. In a year when I've jumped into waterfalls (I have some fear of heights), this was by far the hardest thing I've forced myself to do and I cried afterwards.

Being novices it also took us a long time to process the duck, but there was a lot of it and not much was wasted: black pudding, liver pate, roast duck.

The other duck is doing fine now with all its feathers regrown and follows me around the garden in search of snails, sometimes taking them from my hand if I find them first. It still doesn't have a name though.