New Members of the Family

While I was in Peru, I started mulling over the idea of buying chickens to raise in my backyard so I could have fresh eggs and free fertilizer. The last two weeks I was there, however, I slept in a room that was situated near a henhouse. This quickly ruined any romanticized notions about chicken farming that I had. Chickens are so stinking loud. Oh my goodness. But, like any good one, the idea of having fresh eggs just wouldn't leave my head. Here comes the epiphany: ducks. 
Ducks quack, sure, but not as loudly or as frequently as hens clucking. They also don't produce proper poops for fertilizer, but its a fair tradeoff for not being woken up at 5 a.m. by chickens screaming. So I did some research and decided I wanted to get ducklings of a breed called ancona (yes, like the chicken breed). This particular breed lays between 200 and 280 eggs a year, which is approximately one a day; they stop laying during the coldest part of the winter and the hottest part of the summer. These ducks seemed the perfect choice for two other reasons: they're a relatively low noise level bird, and are naturally flightless (this means no nasty wing clipping procedures). I found a man on craigslist who was selling ancona ducklings out of Baton Rouge. A week later I hopped in the trusty Elephant and drove down to Le Red Stick and picked up these little cuties.

Like "this little pig", they went "cheep cheep cheep," all the way home.

Subsisting on a diet of chick starter crumbles, supplemented with brewer's yeast to prevent niacin deficiency, they lived happily in a dog kennel turned brooder for two weeks. And grew. And grew. And grew. And grew. They doubled in size in about a week and a half.

Got my ducks in a row

Yesterday I worried that they had begun to outgrow their brooder, so I released them into the supervised wild (my backyard). Equipped with a larger water dispenser, they set to work demolishing the bugs and seeds that inhabit my yard. I'm supremely excited to watch these fine ladies grow and start laying this winter!