Adventures and misadventures in Poultry

I haven't posted much here lately. We've been busy with one thing and another, including various experiments in backyard poultry. My brother gave us 4 hens and a rooster at Christmas. They were theoretically his birds before that, but they spent most of the time at our house, anyway, so it wasn't a massive change. They are entertaining and low-maintenance. The biggest hassle they cause is by hiding their eggs all over the property. Nova finds them entertaining and sometimes likes to collect the eggs, when we can find them.


Around about March, things started to get more complicated. I was told that this guy, Jeff, wanted to sell off some egg-laying ducks, so I bought three of them and threw them in with the chickens. At around the same time, my brother talked me into ordering more ducks, because I'd been talking about raising some for meat. Despite pregnancy, the renovation process, a new, short-lived job, and being generally over-extended, I ordered 8 Pekin ducklings from McMurray hatchery.

We were totally unprepared for the ducklings. They spent their first week in a couple of cardboard boxes in the living room, going through at least 6 rounds of water a day, spilling and pooping everywhere, creating a godawful stink. Ducklings are way, way messier than chicks. The stink was getting to me by the time we finally cobbled together a duck house. I started the project and Mike finished it on one of the days when I was off at work, and Nova was parked in front of the TV.

Here's a picture of them at about 3 weeks old:

We had an unusually warm spring this year, so the ducklings spent most of their days outside from the time they were about 2 weeks old onwards. There was a heat lamp in their house for nights, and I put a dimmer switch on it so they wouldn't broil and the electric bill would stay under control. One of them had had an eye infection of some sort, but it cleared up on its own only to return a few weeks later, but other than that they were all healthy despite the night-time overcrowding. Their house was built on a pallet, about 4' by 3' 4", for a total of less than 2 square feet per bird. They really could have used about twice the space, but at least they got to run around outside in the daytime.

All went along at a fairly even keel for a few more weeks until "processing" time came around. Processing is a euphemism for slaughter and butchering, but I guess I don't mind the less graphic terminology. This past weekend was supposed to be processing weekend. I was going to do it on Sunday, with a bit of help from someone or other, and as the day approached the household ganged up on me. My father and husband wanted to give the ducks away, my mother said she just wished I wouldn't do it, etc., etc. By the middle of the day on Sunday, I was a nervous wreck. So I threw the ducks' feed back in and put the slaughter off until Monday morning, when my cousin Jethro and his friend Rob had offered to help (as of Sunday afternoon).

Jethro had killed and butchered chickens, but none of us had done ducks before, so it was a learning process. We had a traffic cone, borrowed from a neighbor, a couple of big pots for scalding, a table, a board to hang them from for plucking, and a bunch of other stuff. It's all a bit of a blur. We got started at 8:30 in the morning, had a long coffee break a bit before noon, the guys took off at 1:30, and I put the last duck in a freezer bag just before 3. It was exhausting, but much better than the horrible, harassed build-up and delay had been the day before. I had great intentions to document the process and the set-up, but getting the job done was more important.

I now have about 56 pounds of duck in the freezer, and a vegetarian husband.