so we let the ducks do the hatching.
Every year, we lose most of them to predators. Everyone loves to eat ducklings, blue herons, turtles, hawks, opossums, weasels, raccoons, fox. There's already a few missing this year. I decided that I'd capture a few myself to raise. We really enjoy eating duck. I'd take a rare grilled duck breast over a steak any day. The Muscovy is much leaner than the other domestic ducks, with a richer flavor, almost like beef.Having a creek running through our property makes it easy to raise ducks. We feed them a little corn, but generally, they are on their own for food. I don't like to overwinter more than 10-12.
Above, is Elton, one of our drakes.
This is Elvis, our other drake. You can't see it in the photo, but he has a black crest. When he raises it, he really does look like Elvis!
We have just one Cayuga duck left, and 2 Pekings (one duck, one drake). I love the coloring of the Cayugas. They don't interact with the Muscovy, which I thought was surprising. I read that they can breed, and the resulting duck is a mule duck, which is sterile. Our Cayuga girl showed up with 10 ducklings this morning. They will be Cayuga/Peking crosses.
No comments:
Post a Comment