We enjoyed watching the ducks from our house and especially when sitting by the pond relaxing in the early weekend morning or after a long day of work. Like the chickens I enjoyed studying their behavior and learning about them from observation. We had the perfect setting for domestic and wild ducks with the vibrant lively pond sheltered by a ring of trees except where we had cleared some to see from our home. After the first year of ducks where we lost 50% of our flock to predation and/or accident.
Determined to persevere on my husband made plans to purchase more waterfowl in the Spring. He studied breeds and decided upon Pekin Ducks and Toulouse Geese. Our neighbor has ducks as well and not such a big pond. His ducks would make the trek across the street to our pond and spend early Spring days exploring before heading back before dark. One of these visitors was a very large Pekin Duck. These are the big white ducks with orange feet. Her size and color made her so visible on the water. I was pleased to hear that Joe was getting some Pekins!
The Touloose Geese were supposed to be friendly yet protectors of a flock so it sounded ideal even though my childhood memories include a big pet goose at a neighbors house who would chase you and bite you if you didn’t run fast enough past their house.
We placed an order for four Pekin girls, a mated pair of Toulouse Geese and six more chickens. For the chickens I chose four Brahmas and two Amerucana. The birds all arrived within a week of each other. The water fowl were the first to arrive. Sadly one Pekin baby was dead on arrival. So immediately we are down to 5 new waterfowl.
I’ve researched baby waterfowl food and found that a brand Mazuri was touted as the best for waterfowl to prevent the leg issues that happen to these babies when they don’t get enough niacin. So of course I order up this brand for our newest family members. Other than this food research I’m glad that Joe is the one in charge of the waterfowl. They are a lot more work than chickens! These birds need lots of water and splash it every where and scatter their food with every bite. If you don’t keep up on it their wet food hardens into an immovable mass.
The geese and ducks share the same brooder space, food and water. It makes sense because they have basically the same requirements and are equally messy. Determined to make friends with these new birds, in particular the geese, Joe spend makes time to handle them every day. One of the geese is particularly docile and Joe believes its the male. These ducks and geese seem to grow before our eyes.
Despite the Mazuri waterfowl starter food they are eating we confer on every perceived limp and potential conformity problem of the ducks. The Pekins do seem to be struggling a bit with their legs. The wobble, fall back and have a bow legged appearance. We are unsure if its their jumbo size and their legs are having trouble keeping up with their fast growing bodies or if they are truly having some medical issues. The bags of food we have been getting from Mazuri say exotic animal food. They don’t precisely say Waterfowl Starter like it says on the Mazuri web page where I’ve been placing my others. Joe switches the waterfowl to the same starter as the chickens and supplements with some niacin ground up into their water. Two of the birds seem to improve but one still struggles to get around.
Meanwhile, we’ve decided on names for the geese, Bonnie and Clyde. Clyde is docile about being picked up and sitting in Joe’s hands and on his lap. He actually seems to enjoy it. Bonnie on the other hand screams and fights like her life depends on it. We have to wrap her in a towel to move her between the swimming tote and the brooder. Despite this I’ve gotten some scratches from her down my arms and eventually stop helping to transport the geese and instead man the doors and towels. The geese are ginormous and the brooder with three Jumbo Pekins and two Geese is crowded.
The one struggle duck continues to worsen. She’s walking on her elbows most of the time and gets knocked around by everyone else n the brooder. She quite cleverly sits under the handing food container so that she doesn’t get trampled. She’s quite a bit smaller than the other ducks and Joe dubs her Bitsy.
I research what to do for her and I reach out to sanctuaries to see if anyone will take her. I hear crickets. I find that Cornell has a “Duck Lab” and I email them asking for help. I quickly receive
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I found this sitting in my drafts in February 2023. I wish I had finished this post back when I started it. In a nutshell poor Bitsy ended up having to be put to sleep. There was nothing anyone could do for her. We no longer have Bonnie & Clyde nor Thelma or Louise. Bonnie and Clyde we gave away as Clyde was very protective of Bonnie and just plain mean. Thelma and Louise died during one bad run with foxes stealing our waterfowl. We still have Billy the Kid the only surviving offspring of Bonnie & Clyde. He’s a nice goose in that he doesn’t try to bite humans. But he’s not soft and cuddly either. He does a pretty good job of looking after his ducks.
Words of Wanderers 