luzula: a Luzula pilosa, or hairy wood-rush (Default)
[personal profile] luzula

Here they are in their enclosure (which is hopefully fox-proof), near their little house which they don't seem very interested in. They are keeping their distance. They do not trust us. This is understandable given that we bundled them squawking into cardboard boxes and abducted them from their previous home. However, they seem to be reasonably happy with their enclosure. They are runner ducks, which move quite fast and upright, but do not fly, and look kind of like deformed mallards.

They do seem to accept the house as a place for laying eggs in! We found these two in the morning. According to the previous owners the females (of which we have two) lay an egg a day. \o/ We scrambled the eggs and had them with lunch. They are bigger than hen eggs and were delicious. I am however a little worried about how we will know how much to feed them--it must be an effort for them to lay that much!

I have the impression that they think their enclosure is fine, but they love the big enclosure with the vegetable beds, where we herded them this morning! The previous owners said they were great slug eaters, which is good, because Sweden has an invasive slug problem (the slugs want to eat the vegetables you grow). A few days before the ducks came, housemate went out with a scissors in the morning and cut 450 slugs. /o\ /o\ Hopefully the ducks will help with this.

The ducks are just instant joy! You look at them and go "awwww, how are they so cute and ridiculous?" and "yay, eating slugs now!". Soon: DUCKLINGS. A friend of ours is incubating some eggs for us so we can eventually have more ducks!

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Date: 2025-04-20 10:39 am (UTC)
nnozomi: (Default)
From: [personal profile] nnozomi
Ducks, yay! You can sing to them "Runner ducky, you're the one, you make slug time so much fun..." (sorry, I grew up on Sesame Street). I love their pompous look, and it's great that they're both eating slugs and providing eggs to eat!
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