Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>]

Animals tend to get bigger in cold climates Pego. Maybe that is the reason for the difference between my farm in Ireland and the situation in Texas. Muscovy males could never get air borne here. Females do fly very occasionally but best down hill at that.

 But either one of our two piddling small predators can kill 30 to 40 muscovies in a few minutes. When foxes are plentiful as they are here now a duck or goose of any size has less than 10% chance of surviving a single night out doors. I am having a serious problem even by day at the moment. So you lock your birds in for the night but if a mink does manage to get in you loose the lot.

A wide variety of predators might actually be easier I have often thought. There is nothing here that can efficiently deal with fox or mink except humans. Of course the natural vegetation of near impenetrable gorse or briars on bog land do not help.

Thanks for taking the time to let me understand.

 

john

----- Original Message -----

From: Pego Rice

To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2010 7:25 PM

Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Muscovy ducks

Here, in Texas, we are in the far north east corner of their natural range.  They are an equatorial bird (generally) but have shown themselves capable of dealing in the north.  NO matter how you think, from your personal flock, there are solid reports from around the world of them going feral in most climates.  Here, where they deal with their natural enemies, they calmly survive around crocodile, raccoon, feral ferrets, dogs and cats, lynx, fox, coyote and even the occasional puma. (that's just in the area, in their central zone I know there are 3-4 more predators) not to mention gettng through our traffic hazard.  I can easily see that if they can survive your weather, they can survive 2 piddling small predators.   So I think any dismissal of their invasive capacity is unrealistic; http://www.squidoo.com/muskovy-ducks  Do remember that prey animals, like these, tend to breed more in the atmosphere of natural predation.  Only active over-hunting (on top of the above list of predation) has quelled their population so deeply in their home range that the issue of conservation even came up.

 

Yours, Pego

<< They would not survive in the wild for more than a very few days with the predators we have (and this is Ireland, no coyotes, raccoons, and all the other duck eaters you are supposed to have in the US, just fox and mink>>

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