Egg Ideosynchrasies

One year into their residency in our backyard, our ducks and chickens continue an improbable output, with the ducks laying daily and the Aracana chickens somewhat less productive. Most of the duck eggs are only slightly larger than the chicken eggs, but now and then the large Pekin duck lays a double yolk whopper, like the one on the left in the photo. Next to it is a chicken egg (more pointed), and a miniature duck egg perhaps laid by the mother mallard whose chicks are nearly grown. The red oak acorn is included for scale.

The duck eggs have thicker shells, which may owe to the ducks' great interest in filtering through dirt and mud with their beaks, which no doubt increases their consumption of minerals. We try to keep the dirt in the backyard as clean as possible, for their eating pleasure.

The miniature egg laid by the mother mallard--the first since she had ducklings--had no yolk at all.

A friend tells me that duck eggs "taste like other eggs only more." In a frying pan, the duck egg on the right is barely distinguishable, with only a slightly larger yolk than the chicken egg.

Once we found a cache of eggs in a tight spot in the coop that was out of sight. Since eggs slowly dry out over time, with air displacing some of the eggwhite, the older ones will angle up or become completely vertical in water, depending on their age. The eggs we found make a series, with gradations of tilt and, presumably, age, starting at ten o'clock and going counterclockwise.

The large influx of eggs crowding our frig causes us, counterintuitively, to eat fewer of them, much like the spectacular production of sunchoke tubers can reduce the desire to eat them. It's a reflex that has to be consciously countered.

Ducks Visit the Backyard

A pair of mallards visited our backyard this morning. The male stood in the middle of the lawn while the female strolled down the garden path, presumably in search of a nice pond to call their own. Were they checking out nesting options? If so, I can't imagine they were pleased. The only standing water is the fillable-spillable tub that catches water from the downspout.

The most appealing interpretation of their surprise visit is that one of them might have been born here five years ago, back when through the luck of the draw we ended upt with a pair of mallards among our fine feathered pets in the backyard. Being a male and female, they soon had five ducklings to call their own. As the ducklings grew, the yard seemed to shrink, overfilled as it now was with ducks and chickens. There were times when we'd hear the nasal call of geese flying overhead, or one or another duck would fly in an impressive arc around the boundaries of the yard, and I'd think for sure they would respond to the call of the wild and venture off into the big world beyond our fenceline. But they never did.

The mallard family eventually ended up at a farm outside of town, whose owners were kind enough to take them off our hands. I read that mallards live 5-10 years in the wild. How lovely to think that they might have come back to have a look around at their old haunts.

For some posts about the ducks we had behind our house on busy Harrison Street, type the word "mallard" into the search box for this blog, or follow this link.

Hawk-Duck Standoff

A typical day in the backyard, the ducks hanging out, inbetween swims in the miniponds and forays to glean whatever they glean from the lawn when it's moist. The largest is the white Pekin duck on the left, with four mostly grown mallard chicks back under the lawn furniture with their mother.

But one afternoon a few days ago, I saw the Pekin chasing the young ducks into the bushes, as if it were bullying them--something I'd never seen the big duck do.

Five or ten minutes later, my daughter looked out the window to see the ducks gone and a hawk perched on the lawn furniture. Never a good sign, if you have urban poultry, but at least it wasn't giving chase to any of the ducks.

It seemed puzzled about what to do next. We ran out, and the hawk flew off, a little smaller than others, and with a beautiful fresh look to the feathers--all the more beautiful because it was flying away without any dinner.

Judging from how the white Pekin duck quickly spots soaring birds overhead, I'd guess it hadn't been bullying the younger ducks but instead herding them to cover, having spied the hawk before any of the rest of us. The big Pekin lumbers about with an exaggerated waddle, and its periodic attempts at flight are reminiscent of the flying machine the chickens build in the claymation film Chicken Run, but it may be playing the role of guardian, just vigilant and intimidating enough to keep the hawks at bay.

The Birthday Ducks

Our two backyard ducks turned one today.

What does one do for a duck on its birthday? A nice little pool full of fresh water is a good start. It wouldn't be right for a duck to be a duck out of water on its birthday.

Hard to believe they were once a living version of rubber duckies, little more than a day old, freshly delivered from California in a cardboard box to the Princeton post office out on Route 1.

If any month can be called normal for receiving ducks in the mail in New Jersey, it's definitely not November. Still, things worked out. They and their baby mallard companions lived their first days and weeks in a spare bathtub with furniture provided by our younger daughter. The accommodations came with all you can eat oatmeal and starter food from a farm supply store just up the road.

From day one, they were ready to follow us anywhere, including an extensive hike in the local nature preserve.

That is they, down by her feet.

Daisy, upper left, is a Pekin duck with a mass to wing ratio that makes flight beyond a few feet problematic, but I like to think that her impressive size and personality is helping give hawks second thoughts about swooping in.

The other ducks, particularly the mallards, could have flown off long ago, but have apparently found our wildflower and shrub-strewn backyard sufficiently entertaining and bountiful to hold their interest. They get along fine with our two chickens and live together in the homemade coop. (The mallards have since moved to the country, which is a separate post.)

The mini-ponds were a plus during the rainy spring and summer, though lack of heavy rains in recent months has left them dry.

Molly, on the right, is a runner duck who expresses a lot of her duck thoughts and feelings by bending her neck in various directions as she walks. The tub gets filled with runoff from the roof, and can be tipped over and emptied if mosquito larvae show up, or if the ducks make the water muddy.

The ducks are quiet most of the time, but can get into conversations. Neighbors tell us they like hearing them, and the sounds must come as a surprise to users of the public park behind our house.

Beyond an occasional coop cleaning, there isn't much more to having them than opening the coop up in the morning, giving them food and water, and making sure to close the door of the coop at dusk after they've gone back in. It's nice to have pets that really enjoy the yard.

When it comes to ducks and giving, we get far more than we give, with each of the ducks bearing an egg a day.

Happy birthday, Daisy and Molly!

Ducklings Coming?

One reason my younger daughter was eager to get home from a trip has to do with a certain female mallard named Swee' Pea, who decided a couple weeks ago that it was a good time to make a nest in the chicken/duck coop. She sits there for long periods, taking periodic breaks to get water and food. The contents of the nest are kept warm during these breaks by a blanket of down.

Before leaving, my daughter shined a light through one of the eggs and detected motion in what looked like a reddish cloud in the egg. She left clear instructions, just in case our friends who took care of the ducks while we were gone didn't notice the well-disguised nest.

"DO NOT DISTURB ME AND MY EGGS"

The sign clearly worked, because Swee' Pea and eggs were safe and sound when we returned. At this point, the ducklings are moving about in the eggs, their motions detectable by 13 year olds but not yet by adults. Though this is largely a take-things-as-they-come approach to having birds in the backyards, there are questions to ask and decisions to be made. If we actually do end up with ducklings, do we separate them from Swee' Pea and raise them in a bathtub in the house? Or do we separate off a portion of the coop for her to raise them? How will the other birds behave around the ducklings? Will the male, Ronnie, play any role? I'm interested to see if the mother will promptly march the newborns off to the nearest minipond, to get acquainted with the joys of water.

Then Came the Duck Eggs

More eggs began showing up in the nest lately, signalling that the ducks had "come on line" after six months in our backyard. Before, with just two Araucana chickens laying, it was easy to tell which eggs were whose. Now, with about four eggs of subtly different shapes and colors showing up every day, it's a bit of a guessing game.

Chances are, these three eggs correspond to the three types of ducks in this photo, with the outsized egg being the work of the big white Pekin, the more numerous mid-sized eggs being the Runner Duck's, and the miniature variety being an early effort by the mate of the male mallard in the photo.

The two eggs on the right in this photo have no shells, but instead are more like water balloons that slowly deflate as they dry out. Sometimes, the presence of these shell-less eggs means the birds aren't getting enough calcium, but they're getting the standard feed for egg-layers, plus whatever they forage for in the garden. More likely, it's taking each bird a few egg-laying tries before they get it right.

Here, the deflating of a shell-less egg is more obvious. A similar process of drying out occurs within a normal egg, though much more slowly because the eggshell has an outer coating, or "bloom", that keeps the egg inside fresh. It's recommended to delay washing of a homegrown egg until just prior to using, so that the coating can help protect it during storage. In fact, refrigeration is not necessary for unwashed eggs if they'll be used within a week, or so I've heard and read. Store-bought eggs tend to have been washed.

Related to this, you may have noticed that some hard-boiled eggs are easier to peel than others. As an uncooked egg sits around, the membranes between shell and eggwhite loosen. Using older eggs for hard-boiling will increase the chance of the shell easily coming loose from the eggwhite during peeling.

This "deflation" of the egg inside the shell also makes it possible to tell whether an egg is fresh or older. As my neighbor Pat pointed out, a fresh egg lays flat at the bottom of a bowl of water, while an older egg will tilt upward at one end because air has gotten trapped inside where the egg has slightly deflated.

Ducklings Born in Princeton!

In a humble coop behind our house on busy Harrison Street, a mallard named Swee' Pea found herself sitting on five ducklings this morning, where five eggs had been the night before. She had been patiently sitting on the nest of straw, feather down and eggs for several weeks. Yesterday, my daughter noticed Swee' Pea becoming increasingly territorial, hissing and thrusting her beak at anyone who came close. Now we know why.

Buttons the Araucana chicken checked things out from a safe distance,

while the father, Ronnie, lacking cigars, took a dip in the tippable duck pond that gets fresh water from the roof gutter every time it rains.

The other ducks normally don't go back in the coop in the middle of the day, but today they did, apparently out of curiosity.

Congratulations, Swee' Pea!

Meanwhile, the owners of said ducks and coop are sent scrambling to the internet to ask a recurring question in animal husbandry, "Now what?"