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+--- Thread: Darlene Update (/showthread.php?tid=203)
Darlene Update - NightskyeB4Dawn - 12-19-2022
I started a thread over at RN3 about Darlene a newly hatched duckling, back in June.
Darlene is doing just great. She is feisty and holds her own. She is smart enough to eat away from the group, because she is blind, and she finds it frustrating. I think she thinks that they are eating up all the food from her, but we make sure she gets her share and more.
I saw this video that reminded me so much of Darlene, I decided to share. Just more proof that perfection is not necessary be happy and to spread joy.
RE: Darlene Update - NightskyeB4Dawn - 01-02-2023
New update.
The girls have started laying eggs!
Now I have a problem. I don't know a damn thing about duck eggs.
Any tips, hints, or info, will be greatly appreciated.
I have not even eaten a duck egg yet. So I am truly in the dark.
RE: Darlene Update - Ninurta - 01-02-2023
Duck eggs are bigger (which you have no doubt already noticed), and they are "tougher" than chicken eggs. I mean, you don't have to break out a hacksaw to cut them or anything, just be ready for a slightly different texture than what you're used to.
Otherwise, I always used them just like chicken eggs Mostly fried, because scrambling them made for sort of rubbery scrambled eggs, and I just didn't much care for that. It only took two of them with some toast or biscuits and grits to make a breakfast for me, where I would usually eat anywhere from 4 to 6 chicken eggs for breakfast in those days.
You might want to avoid baking with them. I dunno, that's uncharted territory for me, but their more solid, substantial texture might change the consistency of baked goods if they are used for that purpose.
I also liked them hard-boiled, but everyone is different. I'd suggest you try a sample of one before going to town on them in any particular cooking method.
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RE: Darlene Update - NightskyeB4Dawn - 01-02-2023
(01-02-2023, 04:38 AM)Ninurta Wrote: Duck eggs are bigger (which you have no doubt already noticed), and they are "tougher" than chicken eggs. I mean, you don't have to break out a hacksaw to cut them or anything, just be ready for a slightly different texture than what you're used to.
Otherwise, I always used them just like chicken eggs Mostly fried, because scrambling them made for sort of rubbery scrambled eggs, and I just didn't much care for that. It only took two of them with some toast ir biscuits and grits to make a breakfast for me, where I would usually eat anywhere from 4 to 6 chicken eggs for breakfast in those days.
You might want to avoid baking with them. I dunno, that's uncharted territory for me, but their more solid, substantial texture might change the consistency of baked goods if they are used for that purpose.
I also liked them hard-boiled, but everyone is different. I'd suggest you try a sample of one before going to town on them in any particular cooking method.
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I greatly appreciate the information. My Brother always liked ducks but he had never raised any before.
I swear they have personalities. He was having trouble with the hawks and the coyote taking the ducks and chickens. He put Rocky in the run with them and he hasn't lost a chicken or a duck since.
Rocky is so good with them. He usually comes in when it gets dark, after they go to their coops. But my Brother got caught in traffic and did not get home before dark to secure them in the coop, so he asked me to go over and lock them in.
He did not expect Rocky to be out with them. But there was Rocky. Protecting them all, out in the pitch dark. Rocky stayed with me until I locked them all in, then he led me to the house.
He is really a good dog. He got a steak that night.
The juvenile coyotes are feeling their Cheerios. They make the weirdest noise when they get together at night. They make more noise than rock and metal heads drunk out of their minds.
One of my neighbors just got a donkey, so maybe that will reduce their activity in the area. If I was younger, I would get a donkey as well. We have two donkeys out here, with the new onslaught of juvenile coyotes, we need about 10.
RE: Darlene Update - Ninurta - 01-02-2023
When I was growing up, we raised ducks, chickens, pigs, and horses. We didn't have a coyote problem back then, not like they have now, but owls, particularly those little bitty screech owls, (they're only about 8" tall or so, and don't realize they don't have the ass to carry a chicken off after they've killed it) and hawks used to get after the ducks and the chickens, and snapping turtles would get after the ducks.
I ate a lot of snapping turtles. I figured I was going to get my ducks back from them one way or another. I had a system for getting the snapping turtles. I mounted a hoe blade on the end of a 10 foot pole. Then I would sit on the bank and wait for the turtles to come up for air, and shoot them, usually in the face or snout, so that I didn't have to punch a bullet through the shell. When you shoot a turtle, they sink like a rock to the bottom. That is where the hoe came in handy - I would use it to claw the turtle out of the water.
On the day I turned 15, I had spent a few nights on the river cat-fishing, and the night before had caught a great big one. I took it home to clean it and cook it, and left it in the creek to keep it fresh while I cleaned up from the trip. When I went out to get it, lo and behold there was a snapping turtle trying to climb the long rock that the creek flowed over into the pond, with the objective of getting my hard-won catfish!
It never got the catfish, but I ate that turtle, too, for trying. And to keep it off the ducks.
Another time, I was out thrashing around in the brush downstream, about a mile from the house, when I ran across a snapping turtle on the land. Dumbassed me, I ran over to it and stepped on the middle of it's shell, then grabbed it by the tail and lifted it off the ground. I had nothing to kill it with, not even a knife, so I had to carry it home with the damned thing trying to eat me up every step of the way. I had to hold it out to the side at arm's length to keep it from biting me, all the way home. 10 pounds ain't much when you start out, but 10 pounds at arm's length over a course of a mile gets pretty wearisome. Having a desire to not get bitten by a turtle that won't turn loose does present an incentive to keep that arm out, despite the weariness and pain.
After that, I always made sure I had a knife on me when I went out thrashing around. I could step on their shell to immobilize them, then tap them on the snout with a stick. They'd get mad and bite the stick, and when a snapper bites, he hates to let loose. Because they'd hang on so tight to the stick, I could pull it and stretch their neck out, then take their head off with the knife just pretty as you please.
We had one duck who lost a toe to a snapper. Another one got half it's ass bitten off by a snapper when it was a duckling, but we doctored it up and it survived anyhow, half-assless.
The ducks we had were the big white ones. I forget the name of them, because we just called them "the ducks" One spring, a mallard drake came down in the middle of them, and took up residence with them. He'd fly off south every fall, but every spring after that he'd come back and spend the summers with our ducks. I don't think he realized he was a wild mallard, and thought that he was just another big white duck.
.Coyotes have become a nuisance there now, and they have a bounty on them over there - $50 bucks for a male, and $75 for a female, because the females can pop out litters of new nuisances.
The chickens we kept were "game" chickens or "figtin' chickens", and let me tell you, they really are "game"! I've seen them, more than once, fight off an attacking hawk... and win.
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RE: Darlene Update - NightskyeB4Dawn - 01-02-2023
(01-02-2023, 04:40 PM)Ninurta Wrote: Coyotes have become a nuisance there now, and they have a bounty on them over there - $50 bucks for a male, and $75 for a female, because the females can pop out litters of new nuisances.
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If they are going to kill them, they have to kill them all or they are will just breed more.
Quote:Why killing doesn't work.
Shoot or poison coyotes and you will have just as many again within a year or two. Kill one or both members of the alpha pair (A)—the only pair who normally reproduces—and other pairs will form and reproduce. At the same time, lone coyotes will move in to mate, young coyotes will start having offspring sooner ...
https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/why-killing-coyotes-doesnt-work
RE: Darlene Update - Ninurta - 01-02-2023
(01-02-2023, 07:33 PM)NightskyeB4Dawn Wrote:(01-02-2023, 04:40 PM)Ninurta Wrote: Coyotes have become a nuisance there now, and they have a bounty on them over there - $50 bucks for a male, and $75 for a female, because the females can pop out litters of new nuisances.
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If they are going to kill them, they have to kill them all or they are will just breed more.
Quote:Why killing doesn't work.
Shoot or poison coyotes and you will have just as many again within a year or two. Kill one or both members of the alpha pair (A)—the only pair who normally reproduces—and other pairs will form and reproduce. At the same time, lone coyotes will move in to mate, young coyotes will start having offspring sooner ...
https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/why-killing-coyotes-doesnt-work
I don't think the objective is to exterminate them so much as to keep the population numbers down and under control.
They were eradicated in the eastern US for nearly 100 years, but then some prairie coyotes invaded by crossing the Mississippi river in Minnesota, where it's narrowest. On their way, they interbred with Timber Wolves in Minnesota and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and the result was that all of the coyotes in the eastern US that have been tested so far have some degree of admixture with wolves. They call them "coywolves". Some are more mixed, some less. I saw one in Buchanan County, VA one morning that was about 5 feet long from the tip of his nose to the root of his tail - HUGE for a coyote - and who had grayer hair than the usual tan of a coyote, and a slightly heavier muzzle and less pointed ears, both wolf traits. I'm guessing the wolf was pretty strong in that one!
There are also a few Red Wolves around now. They too were nearly exterminated, but a breeding program is bringing them back. There is a breeding facility in eastern North Carolina where they are bred, and then they are taken to the mountains in western North Carolina and released into the wild. Now, being wolves, and wild, they are pretty mobile, and don't always stay where they are released. That's why they are now occasionally seen elsewhere. It's hard to tell them from a coyote except by an expert - they are smaller than Timber wolves, and have other coyote-looking traits as well, and are often mistaken for coyotes or coywolves.
Elk are also being brought back into the area, after an absence of almost 200 years. There is a pretty big herd of them in Buchanan County, VA - about 400, last time I checked. Before that, the last elk killed in these parts was killed in 1820, just north of here in WV. This herd started from stragglers that were in a re-introduction program in Kentucky. They failed to realize that elk can't read border markers, so not all of them stayed in Kentucky - some crossed the state line into VA, and established a herd in Buchanan County. They are "legal" to hunt in some places in VA now, but everywhere they are legal to hunt, there aren't any there to be hunted. It's illegal to hunt them in counties where they actually exist. In all of the counties where they don't exist, the elk season is exactly the same as the deer season... but there aren't any there to kill.
I'd like to see them bring back Woodland Bison here, too, but I don't think that will ever happen, because I think the species is extinct now. Woodland Bison were larger than the Plains Bison we still have out west. I don't know why - it seems like navigating the woods would favor a smaller Bison rather than a larger one, but that's just the way it was in the real world. They used to roam all over the place here. I have records from Lord Dunmore's War that show that some people, among them Daniel Boone, used to bring in Woodland Bison pelts and sell them to the government at Russell's Fort in what is now Castlewood, VA. They hunted them locally, and sometimes went as far afield as Eastern and Central Kentucky to hunt them.
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RE: Darlene Update - NightskyeB4Dawn - 07-10-2023
Darlene had a freak out when my Brother hatched 8 baby ducks. She tried to play Mommy to them but they weren't having any of it. They are grown now, and Darlene went missing. We found her in a hidden spot in the teen duck house. She built a nest and she is brooding.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
RE: Darlene Update - NightskyeB4Dawn - 04-27-2024
We thought Darlene was gone.
She ran off with Drake, which is weird, because Darlene usually hangs by herself, unless she is brooding, then 3 or 4 of the chickens bunk down with her. Drake usually hangs with 3 or 4 of the females at a time. And the other boys just hang together.
Today Drake and Darlene disappeared. We couldn't find them anywhere. Imagine our surprise that as the sun was going down, up comes Darlene and Drake, like nothing had happened.
Darlene is still a hot mess.