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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] Ducks in the garden

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  • From: "Donna &/or Kieran" <holycow@cookeville.com>
  • To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Ducks in the garden
  • Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2008 09:32:24 -0500

Hmmm... I didn't have these terrible experiences. We started with 5 baby Campbells in March, I don't remember when we started letting them in the garden. Japanese beetles don't appear till the end of May, run for about 6 weeks. There is a small pond in the garden area, one reason for getting the ducks was in hopes of helping that pond to hold water better, which they did do. The ducks spent a lot of time in the pond, but they did wander through the garden, and in Jap beetle season they would race to the smartweed patch and snatch beetles like crazy. They'd raid that patch every few hours. The ducks were locked up at night. It was the Muscovies who were so fond of pepper plants, so we had to fence them out of that area.
I think, in response to Muffy's question regarding pigs, not to mention the ducks, chickens, geese, etc, the trick is not to have the animals in the garden or orchard continuously day and night. If they are hungry when they are released, they will quickly scarf up as much food as possible, whether it be drops or bugs or grass (in the case of sheep) and then in an hour or three they can be penned up again. (Something that can be time consuming in the case of ducks, as I well know, and in the case of banties, practically impossible.) If left after they have satisfied their initial hunger, they will start in on whatever nefarious "hobbies" their species enjoys, which in practically all cases listed consists of some form of grubbing in the ground. The one exception I can think to this approach would be banties for curculio control. They probably need to be on hand most of the time curculios are active, both in egg laying season and when the fruit is falling, and in general banties don't do as much damage as the other creatures. They'd LIKE to do as much damage, but as they weigh 1 to 1 1/2 lbs apeice, they just can't compared to 5-6 lb hens. Now that I'm finally getting smart enough to take my own advice and put my plums and peaches all in a single block, (something I am doing now on the second go around) I'm thinking I should fence in the area, clip some banty wings and run a mama and some youngsters in there, with a little closed in cage for putting food and perches in. For a month or so the mama will hover the chicks by choice in a nice safe cage at night, and hopefully they will use the perches after that till they get big enough to sleep in the trees. Banties multiply so fast, I sort of regard them as interchangeable units. I guess the local poultry auction makes it easier for me to acquire or get rid of banties compared to those of you in more civilized and "enlightened" areas. At the beginning I was buying a lot of little roosters cheaply, which fed the local dogs and strays till we and the chickens got our act together. I've read that the Hmong like small chickens, so it might be possible to get rid of all the surplus at the end of the summer, keeping only a few well protected adults to start again next year. Or buy chicks every year, something a bit iffy with banties I think.
There are slugs working on my early peas, something I haven't had to worry about for several years. But since our new neighbors dogs killed our ducks last spring, we have not dared to get more. Their 3 large dogs roam for miles, coming through our place so frequently that our dogs don't even bark to warn us anymore. My husband now keeps cayenne pepper sprinkled around the chicken cages since another set of dogs (same extended family owns them, large German shepards are their preferred breed) spent an entire night chewing through 1/2" chipboard and killed all the chickens in one cage. He keeps the .22 handy but the *&^%$** dogs are too sneaky for us. The banties running loose seem to be at least as safe as the caged ones, as they stick to the trees where they can easily escape. Any ideas on the dog front would be welcome.
Donna
P.S. Something that might interest some of you is that if you keep small chickens, you will get to see lots more hawks, and up closer than most people see them. I don't mind losing a few for that privilege.




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