Our muscovy ducks ♫ ☠Do the ducky dance ☠♫

We just recently picked up a trio of Muscovy ducks and its really starting to feel like a farm around here. With 2 chickens, 2 goats, 3 ducks, 6 barn cats and a caboodle of kittens We are on our way!.

The one thing I can tell you is, out of all the animals we have so far, the ducks are a delight to take care of. They waddle around, with no big hurry, feasting through bugs in the air and grasses on the ground. Corralling them to a certain location is beyond easy, just walk behind, helping guide them in the right direction, and off they go!. The only slight gripe I have is, sometimes, if Im a little forgetful and leave the goat pen door open, the ducks get in and start eating all the left-over seed on the ground, THEN POOP.

Muscovy ducks cleaning themselves

Muscovy duck closeup ( male )

Our male Muscovy has a wonderful demeanor, he shows no bother to our two goats, even going as far as to compete with them over snacks on the ground. When he flaps his wings, you can feel the air move all around you, freaks my goats right out!, Hes also one snazzy dancer, If you walk up and bob your head slightly, he does his little dance and shakes his tale.

One of our female Muscovys has blue eyes and is the more timid of the bunch. The other female seems to like de-feathering her, it was only a big issue when we first got them, everything has seemed to calm down now, Thankfully.

Muscovy closeup

 Our other female is in the background and has been laying eggs quite voraciously.

 Im not sure what these are, if anyone has an idea please chime in!

I dont know too much about flowers but I sure can appreciate them! From what I understand, this is an iris. It grows wild under our maple trees in our front yard and what I find interesting is, How similar in looks it is to a vanilla vine

Our rhubarb has started to flower and I figured I would collect some seeds and see what comes of it.
I understand quite well the complexities of growing plants whose seeds pop out like the roulette effect. Yes, it will not be like the parent plant but thats the whole point!. When it comes to these things, the more genetic variety the better, after all, I would hate to see what happened to the banana happen to rhubarb, I couldnt go on with out my pies and strawberry rhubarb deserts.
I swear on that giant spaghetti monster in the sky!

Are these prickly poppies?

Now, Ive grown poppies before, mainly for leaning about the medical aspects and how theyre grown but I never got that into all the other varieties. They look vary similar, the flower pod, the stem, the spikes on the flower bud, but the leaves are soooooOOOOOO covered in thorns it just didnt look like what I know. Ive only grown papaver somniferum, some Hawaiian blue poppy and a few others I piked up from Richters herbs.

If anyone out there knows what this is please let us know!

Its certainly something living out in eastern Ontario. The amount of wildlife here is extraordinary.
BUT! I feel there is a warning I must give to future property investors,
The one thing that might wreck it for SOME people is......
THE BUGS.

Man OOOO man are there bugs.

Ive never experienced anything like the bug population here. If you breath in to heavily, youve just consumed you protein for the day. The black flies will dive bomb your eyes and the mosquitoes will suck you inside out. Now, there is a benefit to all this chaos. The ecosystem is THRIVING. The amount of bird species here is unlike anything else in Ontario, the butterflies are everywhere, the parasitoid wasps are around in apocalyptic droves. Bees and wasps are a plenty here, at least on the organic farms that is.
So, if you can put up with a mouth full of bugs, you will do fine down here. lol.

Cheers!

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Baby muscovy ducks

Our Muscovys have been producing eggs since spring and now, of all times, is when they decide to hatch them out; they certainly picked a funny season those silly little quackers. With fall just around the corner we still have enough time for them to grow, the only problem now, keeping walking bait away from the barn cats.
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As soon as they hatched the father duck wouldnt leave the coop, I thought it was just some nice gesture to the moma but boy was I wrong. So the next day I walked in and gave them some feed, then, out of nowhere, the male duck bends down and snaps up a little baby duck by the head.

WHAT THE!!

So after a little research I found out this can happen, the male might be trying to stay in his hierarchical position, so any new male competition is lunch, regardless of whether its his babies or not.

The interesting thing of all this is, one day, the moma duck looked like she had left the kids with the other duck, well call her auntie. I thought to myself (how nice), it almost seemed like some type of companion parenting, after all, it does take a village, right.

But soon I realized something was off. Whenever moma duck came around, auntie would hiss, then  start biting and I could tell auntie wasnt letting moma near her babies.

This must have been happening for a while as when I separated the babies from auntie, they chirped away very unhappily. Auntie did not want to give up those babies, she hissed at me, bit me twice and fluttered in my face with her wings. Im starting to wonder if maybe she doesnt think shes stealing them, maybe she thinks there her own for some reason?. not sure why all this happened, but very interesting to watch the drama unfold.

In the picture here is moma duck and babies. Moma is a blue eyed, all white Muscovy, with a very friendly attitude. Her sister on the other hand,......

The little yellow one was just stepped on by our new goat, it was terrifying.
I thought she was a goner. But she literately dusted herself off, pushed her wing back into place and went off hunting for bugs with the rest of the family. Not even a sign of hurt or shock. I figured Id give it a day or two to really know how she was doing and so far, shes a trooper.

The old nest. As soon as the young ones hatched she gave up on the old eggs.

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